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New York City has set up at least 83 hotels and five humanitarian assistance centers to house newly arrived immigrants. Mayor Eric Adams said the aid is being offered while they process documents and look for work.
Adams explained that the hotels are of various categories, and media outlets, such as the Efe news agency, detailed that some are “even somewhat luxurious, such as the Holiday Inn in the Financial District, overlooking the Hudson River.”
In addition, Adams reported that at least 44,000 immigrants, mostly Venezuelans, have arrived in New York in the last 10 months. “Overcrowding public shelters, the city has had to resort to renting rooms in hotels to provide them with shelter, as well as meals and legal services, among other assistance,” reported Efe.
“We continue to meet all of our moral obligations, serving those who arrive with dignity and care, but we continue to urgently need additional support from our federal partners, including a real decompression strategy to stem this influx,” said the city’s mayor.
Immigrants protest in New York
Eric Adams‘ decision to open the shelters follows protests by immigrants in the city last week. The situation arose after they were evicted from a hotel in which they were staying. It comes at a time when the influx of illegal immigrants has increased due to Democratic policies.
Venezuelan immigrants who recently arrived in New York spent several days sleeping on the streets, despite the winter cold, in protest at being evicted from the hotel in Manhattan that had served as their refuge and sent to another shelter that, according to them, did not meet living conditions.
Despite the migration crisis in the government of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Secretary of Homeland Security defended the Democrats’ policy. He stated in Miami that the humanitarian program for Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians and Nicaraguans implemented since the beginning of January has supposedly brought down the irregular arrival of illegal migrants by 90 % and described a lawsuit filed to stop it as incomprehensible.
The crisis that Biden’s immigration policy would entail had been warned by Republican leaders. Last year, Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham denounced Alejandro Mayorkas’ mismanagement and called for his dismissal for his handling of the crisis.
Williams Perdomo es periodista y escritor, especializado en las fuentes Política y Cultura.