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A group of migrants continued to camp outside a midtown Manhattan hotel in New York City, refusing to follow city officials’ orders to relocate to a shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on Tuesday, January 31, according to local news reports.

Video posted by Twitter user @datainput, which he said was filmed on Monday night, shows migrants lining the sidewalks outside the New York hotel as police officers watch from the street. People gathered as a man said a prayer in Spanish, the footage shows.

Local news outlets reported that the city planned to move single men from the Watson Hotel to the Brooklyn shelter, which can house 1,000 people, to make room for migrant families. Dozens of people set up camp outside the hotel in protest of the relocation. Some cited fear of losing their new jobs and concerns about the living conditions of the shelter, saying that the center was like a “prison,” the reports said.

Mayor Eric Adams visited the shelter, saying that the center had “healthy food” and was heated.

Make the Road NY, an organization that says it advocates for immigrants and “working-class people of color” in New York state, said they condemn the city’s action to force asylum seekers to move to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. “The city must treat recently arrived people as just that – people, who need stability to have a functional day-to-day life, not puzzle pieces to be moved around arbitrarily,” the statement said.

It was not the first time that living conditions in asylum-seeker shelters in New York had been criticized, with Gothamist, a local newsroom, previously reporting that tents the Adams administration set up “may violate NYC’s right to shelter.” Credit: @datainput via Storyful