Mayor Adams Gives Illegal Migrants 60-Days’ Notice
FAIR Take | July 2023
Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the city plans to give adult migrants in its shelters 60 days to find new housing. The city will assign caseworkers to each illegal alien to help them “explore other housing options and take the next step in their journey.” If the adults are not able to find housing, they will have to return to the city’s intake center and reapply for housing. However, is unclear what would happen if there is not housing available at the intake centers.
The Mayor said the decision to move illegal aliens out of its shelters was so the city could take in newcomers – especially families with children – arriving daily. According to Mr. Adams, roughly 300-500 illegal migrants are arriving in New York City from the southern border each day. Since the spring of 2022, over 90,000 illegal aliens have poured into New York City and more than 54,800 are still in the City’s care. “New York City,” he said, “is at capacity.” Combined with the city’s existing homeless population, a record 105,800 people are being housed in NYC shelters.
Already, residents of New York are experiencing the impact of thousands of migrants leaving the City’s shelters. Last week, over a dozen Venezuelan migrants created their own mini tent city under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway after being ejected from one of the city’s largest shelters for fighting. The encampment has three tents, a huge tarp and multiple mattresses crammed between rows of parked vehicles. It lies just a few feet away from the construction of a new, massive shelter on Hall Street that is designed to hold roughly 2,000 single adult migrants.
According to the New York Post, ever since Mayor Adams announced the location of the new Hall Street shelter, residents have witnessed the neighborhood deteriorate. “There’s a big problem of people just loitering in this park — drinking, smoking,” the one dad said, adding that he won’t allow his children to play there anymore. “It’s continued to get worse. I’ve called 311 a couple of times for drinking. Police have come and moved them on.”
Mayor Adams has also announced that he will begin to discourage illegal aliens at the southern border from traveling to New York City in the first place. The city plans to distribute flyers at the border that describe, in English and Spanish, New York City’s high cost of housing, food and transportation. They also state that there is no guarantee that new aliens arriving will receive shelter in the City. “Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the U.S.,” it concludes.
In making these changes, Mayor Adams complained how New York City has borne the brunt of this migrant crisis without any help from the State or Federal governments. In May, Mayor Adams sent a letter to the deputy chief administrative judge for New York City Courts requesting official changes to the 1981 consent decree that established New York’s requirement to provide shelter for anyone who applies for it. The city asked that the wording be changed to allow it to deny shelter to homeless adults and adult families if it “lacks the resources and capacity to establish and maintain sufficient shelter sites, staffing, and security to provide safe and appropriate shelter.”
Groups on the left, however, have strongly opposed any attempt to change the consent decree. The Legal Aid Society, which filed the litigation that led to the right to shelter, and the Coalition for the Homeless issued a joint statement rebuking Mayor Adams for even requesting it. “The administration’s request to suspend the long-established state constitutional right that protects our clients from the elements is not who we are as a city,” the groups said. “New Yorkers do not want to see anyone, including asylum seekers, relegated to the streets. We will vigorously oppose any motion from this administration that seeks to undo these fundamental protections that have long defined our city.”
However, the cost to New York taxpayers for the city’s sanctuary city policies has already been enormous. To address the influx of illegal aliens, the City has opened more than 185 emergency shelters (including 13 large-scale humanitarian relief centers), created centers to help illegal aliens find additional resources; enrolled thousands of children in public schools through Project Open Arms; and is in the process of creating the Asylum Application Help Center to help illegal aliens file asylum applications. Mayor Adams has estimated, some say conservatively, that the city will spend a total of $4.3 billion on caring for illegal aliens at the end of this two-year period.