Inside New York City’s Botched Response to Migrant Arrivals – Mother Jones

Migrants line up for immigration companies outdoors Federal Plaza in decrease Manhattan. Andrea Renault/Zuma Press

The arrival of greater than 150,000 migrants in New York Metropolis for the reason that spring of 2022 has made the Large Apple the epicenter of a so-called migrant disaster. It spurred protests from Staten Island to Queens, turned a helpful speaking level for conservatives, and created a political problem for Mayor Eric Adams. After saying the humanitarian disaster would “destroy” New York, he moved to attempt to halt town’s longstanding dedication to offering shelter to anybody who wants it, even touring to Latin America to attempt to discourage potential asylum seekers from setting off for New York. 

As I wrote in a September dispatch from outdoors the Roosevelt Lodge, town’s primary asylum consumption middle that has been dubbed the “new Ellis Island,” I witnessed asylum-seeking households “caught between a metropolis’s long-standing dedication to welcome and shelter foreigners and people in want and politically-driven zero-sum messages that pit residents and residents in opposition to newcomers.”

Now, a damning new report by the New York Occasions revealed this week provides some perception into New York Metropolis’s—and its mayor’s—response to the predicament. “For a lot of the disaster,” reporters Andy Newman and Dana Rubinstein write, “town didn’t take fundamental steps to assist migrants transfer out of shelters and discover properties in a metropolis famed for its sky-high rents. It waited a 12 months to assist giant numbers of migrants file for asylum, seemingly closing a pathway to authorized employment for 1000’s.”

The town additionally reportedly entered no-bid emergency contracts price greater than $2 million, together with with contractors accused of mistreating migrants. It additionally spent twice as a lot cash housing a migrant “family” than the quantity allotted to shelter homeless households—a mean of just about $400 a day, in comparison with $188. As well as, the Occasions stories, “town appeared to disregard calls to offer extra companies to assist migrants transfer out of shelters sooner, a lapse that grew extra expensive with time.” 

By means of interviews with metropolis officers, migrants, and advocates, the Occasions describes the expensive and inept dealing with of the inflow of migrants as a sequence of “avoidable errors” by the Adams administration—from overspending for shelter to failing to conduct fundamental case administration early on to find out about migrants’ immigration standing and doable household ties within the metropolis. “It was a herky-jerky, expensive method to disaster administration that will come to typify town’s battle to maintain up with the ebb and movement of migrants,” the article notes.

The total story will be learn right here.