NYC’s Roosevelt Hotel becomes epicenter of city’s 60,000-strong refugee crisis in shocking scenes from Manhattan
- The desperate people looking to get inside the hotel early on Tuesday morning were speaking a number of languages, including Spanish, French, and Arabic
- Swathes of asylum seekers lined the streets sleeping on cardboard overnight because the NYC migrant hotel has reached capacity
Hundreds of migrants have been sleeping outside of Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotel for a second day in a row – as NYC Mayor Eric Adams said the crisis is ‘not over.’
Swathes of asylum seekers, hailing from a number of South American and African countries, lined the streets sleeping on cardboard overnight because the migrant hotel has reached capacity.
‘I want a better life,’ one migrant told DailyMail.com from the queue outside the chaotic migrant epicenter on Tuesday morning.
The immense number of migrants arriving from southern states continues to rise – as a result of policies that caused thousands of asylum seekers to overrun the US-Mexico border.
New York City is currently housing more than 56,000 migrants across around 200 makeshift sites – while thousands more are in the city’s shelter system. But buses keep arriving week-on-week transporting people from the border.
The Roosevelt Hotel, which was shuttered three years ago, is one of several hotels that have been transformed into emergency centers as the city struggles with an influx of migrants.
Swathes of asylum seekers, hailing from a number of South American and African countries, lined the streets sleeping on cardboard overnight because the migrant hotel has reached capacity
The desperate people looking to get inside the hotel early on Tuesday morning were speaking a number of languages, including Spanish, French, and Arabic
New York City is currently housing more than 56,000 migrants across around 200 makeshift sites – while thousands more are in the city’s shelter system. But buses keep arriving week on week fresh from the border
Many of the people on the streets just have the clothes on their back and the cardboard they are sleeping on
New York is bound by a decades-old consent decree in a class-action lawsuit to provide shelter for those without homes.
As a result, the Roosevelt Hotel and others have become hubs for refugees – within walking distance from Times Square, the World Trade Center memorial site and the Empire State Building.
Over the weekend, the migrants were handed small red tickets with digits on them – and once in a while hotel workers would come out and call numbers to let people inside the air-conditioned lobby.
Others, desperately pushing closer to the front to get inside, were left to wait outside in the New York City heat.
The desperate people looking to get inside the hotel early on Tuesday morning were speaking a number of languages, including Spanish, French and Arabic.
Migrants pictured Tuesday morning pushing to the front of the line after a false alarm told them they’d be going inside
Mahmouth, a migrant from Diungame in Senegal, has been waiting on the streets of New York City for five days, desperate for a spot to rest his head.
He told DailyMail.com: ‘We’re night and day here. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.’
Sahi Khalil, from Mauritania, arrived in New York two months ago, before being transferred to Ohio and moving back to the Big Apple. He was living in the Magma Hotel in Queens before being thrown out.
He told DailyMail.com from the line on Tuesday: ‘They moved all of us out – they said they wanted to move a family in.’
Khalil was then put into one of the city’s shelters but has tried his shot at getting into the Roosevelt Hotel.
He added: ‘My friends said they’ve been here 3 days. They slept here on the street for three days. I want a better life. I wish them a better life. We are suffering in our country.
‘We don’t have nothing to protect us from the heat. We can’t stay here night after night. The application process is so slow. Since the morning, they haven’t taken one person and more people keep coming.’
When asked why he wants to migrate to the US, he said the country is a ‘place of freedom and dignity.’
Groups of migrants, hailing from a number of African counties, are forced to sleep on the streets during Manhattan’s heatwave
The migrants were handed small red tickets with digits on them – and once in a while hotel workers would come out and call numbers to let people inside the air-conditioned lobby
The city says more than 93,000 asylum seekers came through the intake system last spring
Some of the migrants have been bussed from Texas and the southern boarder. Others hail from further away
Troy Vargas, who arrived from Venezuela, said that New York City is ‘beautiful’ and it has been her dream to work here.
She said from the Midtown Manhattan street: ‘I want to work in the United States and learn.’
Mohammed Fatima, who hails from Bhutan in South Asia, has so far spent three nights on the streets.
He told DailyMail.com: ‘I want a break, we sleep on the streets it’s hard. I want to rest, I want to sleep. I want any place to sleep.
‘I came to America, a free and democratic country. I love America more than my country.’
Eric Adams said in a statement on Monday: ‘Children and families continue to be prioritized and are found a bed every night.
‘While we at least offered all adults a temporary place to wait off the sidewalks last night, some may have chosen to sleep outside.
‘And, in all honesty, New Yorkers may continue to see that more and more as hundreds of asylum seekers continue to arrive each day.’
Many have now spent two nights sleeping on the streets of New York, after being dropped off on buses from the southern border in Texas. Unless they are inside the hotel, many have been refused entry to use the restroom inside.
One migrant, named Mary who traveled from Venezuela, told The City that she was in floods of tears after hotel workers refused her use the restroom at 2am. She wandered the streets looking for somewhere else to use the toilet.
A group of men, from Chad in Africa, huddled around a gutter to wash their feet before praying in the line on Saturday amid their long wait to get inside.
The long line of migrants hail from many different countries – including Venezuela, Ecuador, Sudan, Bhutan, Mauritania, and Senegal.
One migrant shared with DailyMail.com his referral form – telling him to head to the Roosevelt Hotel for refuge. He has not been able to get inside yet
Workers handing out food to the migrants who are waiting in queues to get a spot at the hotel in Midtown Manhattan
Many have now spent two nights sleeping on the streets of New York, after being dropped off on buses from the southern border in Texas. Unless they are inside the hotel, many have been refused entry to use the restroom inside
Following the scenes in Midtown, the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless slammed the city for allowing the migrants to sleep on the streets.
They said in a statement: ‘There is no dispute that the City has a legal obligation to find an appropriate placement for anyone in need of shelter in a timely fashion.
‘Denying new arrivals placement and forcing people to languish on local streets is cruel and runs afoul of a range of court orders and local laws.’
The organization threatened to sue if something is not done to help those on the street.
The city says more than 93,000 asylum seekers came through the intake system since April 2022.
Some of the thousands of migrants who have arrived in NYC have been been bused in from Florida and Texas, as the states’ conservative governments argue progressive cities should share the burden.
Texas’ governor Greg Abbott has sent about 9,700 asylum seekers to New York City, according to Politico.
Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis has flown about 85 migrants to Massachusetts and California.
A worker walks past the Roosevelt Hotel on Tuesday morning, where migrants have lined the outskirts as they desperately wait to be called in to get a room
Hundreds of migrants line up early on August 1, 2023, for placement at the Roosevelt Hotel intake center
Migrants sleeping outside the Roosevelt Hotel
NYC Mayor Eric Adams responded by sending migrants to red states – with some even being sent as far as South America and China.
The Democrat spent about $50,000 of the city’s money to send 114 migrant households elsewhere – with 28 families sent to Florida with 14 sent to Texas and a few to Colombia and one family to China after being allowed to choose their destination.
Adams, who has called the immigration crisis a ‘disaster’, has opened 174 emergency shelters and intake centers.
The city is slated to spend more than $4.3billion to try and slow the crisis.
Adams has also scrambled to house migrants while asking for help from the federal government.
He said previously: ‘New York City continues to receive thousands of asylum seekers each week, and we have stepped up and led the nation, but this national crisis should not fall on cities alone to navigate. We need a national solution here.’
The mayor also previously slammed DeSantis and Abbott for bussing migrants to New York and other northeastern locales in what he called a ‘political stunt.’
Earlier this year, Adams visited the U.S.-Mexico border and called the situation ‘a disaster’ that needed to be addressed at the federal level.
‘Why isn’t this considered a disaster? This is a crisis,’ Adams said at the end of his border visit.
‘No one is coordinating this national effort,’ he said from Texas.
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