About fifty immigrants, the vast majority young Venezuelans, protested Monday to avoid being transferred from the Watson Hotel in Manhattan to a new shelter in the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.
Given the tension caused by the group of protesters, police intervention was required. Although there were no arrests or struggles.
The decision on the specific transfer of single people is based on the fact that this hotel facility, located in the central neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, will be used to accommodate families with children. It is just one of the 70 hotels that were rented by the City of New York to offer temporary shelter to immigrants.
“More than 42,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the Big Apple since last spring. We continue to exceed our moral obligations by providing them with shelter, food, medical care, education, and a host of other services,” spokespersons for the Mayor’s Office detailed to local media.
Municipal sources assure that the facilities of the humanitarian response center of the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, in Red Hook, provide the same services as any other aid center in the city.
It is also reported that the relocations scheduled from this weekend will take place as planned.
Meanwhile, through a public letter, consigned by Councilwoman Alexa Avilés, Assemblywoman Marcela Meytanes and Senator Andrew Gournades, Democratic elected leaders representing parts of Brooklyn, repudiated the conditions of the new humanitarian refuge center, comparing it with the cold border detention centers.
“We urge the Mayor to postpone this initiative. Other solutions should be explored,” they concluded.
Why did they let us into the country?
For their part, a group of young people who refused to be mobilized to Brooklyn since the weekend, remained in tents on the outskirts of the hotel, demanding that they be offered another space.
Another group agreed amid strong tensions to accept the conditions of the new shelter.
“Many of our comrades have already told us that it is a tent like a prison, with mattresses thrown on the ground, where they are going to put a thousand people. It is also a cold space like a freezer. We only demand that they treat us as human beings”, a 25-year-old Venezuelan youth shouted “Jefferson”, who has been staying at the Watson Hotel for a month. Three months ago, he crossed the southern border with Mexico.
Others recounted that they were violently taken from the room by hotel security officers, while angrily demanding that both the federal government and the City guarantee them a more comfortable place to sleep.
“We just want to work and help us with a bed. Why did they let us into the country and offer us help, if now they are going to throw us into that place, where even some of our compañeros have been robbed. Many of us already know what it is like to sleep in those tents,” said another young Venezuelan, who was reluctant to accept going to Brooklyn.
For his part, Jonatan Matheus from the organization América Diversa, which promotes support for immigrants from the LGBTQ community, urged that the relocation of single adults should be done more exhaustively, because prioritizing attention to families with children could put at risk to older adults, women and disabled people.
expensive and unpopular
In contrast, Mayor Eric Adams continues to raise the tone on the need for the federal and state governments to offer assistance in the face of the heavy fiscal burden that this crisis means for the Big Apple.
It has been estimated that it will cost the City $1 billion to continue to house and serve the thousands of immigrants. They are mostly South Americans who keep coming.
It was unofficially known that at least $275 million has been spent by the City in contracts with hotels to accommodate 5,000 immigrants.
The skirmish in the central New York hotel falls precisely on the fertile ground of a great controversy about the immigration crisis transferred to the Big Apple since last spring.
Sources from the New York City Hall revealed to El Diario that in the midst of the challenges of the pandemic recovery, where hundreds of residents in majority Hispanic neighborhoods are struggling not to be evicted from their homes, recent opinion polls point to a “resounding rejection of ” to the fact that the City continues to invest millions of dollars in offering lodging and food to “newcomers”.
“That is why federal aid is necessary, in the face of this crisis that we have addressed following our historical commitment to welcome immigrants. But as the Mayor has said publicly and responsibly, they keep coming and the City doesn’t have the resources to attend to them. And even more so, if that implies cutting vital services to taxpayers”, commented the spokesperson.
X-ray of a crisis:
- 36,000 people have arrived in NYC since last spring, bussed from Texas after crossing the southern border with Mexico. 90% of them came from Venezuela.
- 24,000 currently continue to depend on the help of social programs from the Mayor’s Office, including accommodation in 70 hotels set up as shelters.
- $2 billion will cost New York City this immigration crisis.
- 3,100 people arrived only in this 2023.