NYC: Just 1% of migrants subsidized by city have been relocated
Migrants board a bus last month at the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan for transport to a city shelter intake center. Credit: Bloomberg/Victor J. Blue
Only 1% of the tens of thousands of foreign migrants subsidized by New York City during the current crisis have been relocated elsewhere in the state — as the Adams administration continues to face resistance from most outside jurisdictions to accepting them.
About 650 migrants have been relocated, to accommodations upstate, said Fabien Levy, Mayor Eric Adams’ press secretary, with the city paying for transportation.
They are all adults except for a few parents with non-school-age children under 5, according to the city's chief engagement officer, Betsy MacLean.
Since last spring, more than 76,000 migrants have arrived in the city. Of that number, 48,100 are being subsidized by the city, with housing, food and other services at hotels, motels or shelters. And of that total, about 650 have been transported elsewhere in the state.
The city, which is under a rare-in-the-nation judicial obligation to provide shelter to whoever needs it, last week sued 31 jurisdictions across the state — including Riverhead and Suffolk — seeking to void those places’ emergency orders restricting migrant relocations by the city.
The county executives of Nassau and Suffolk say the city hasn’t yet tried to place migrants on Long Island, but Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said last month it was only a matter of time.
Those who have been relocated are in city-funded accommodations including in Ardsley and White Plains in Westchester County; Newburgh in Orange; Poughkeepsie in Dutchess; and Albany, where "the lion's share" are living, according to Adolfo Carrión, Adams’ housing commissioner.
"About 1% of the entire asylum-seeker population that has come to, figuratively speaking, the shores of New York, if you will, about 1% are outside of New York City right now," he said.
Williams-Isom said last month that most have yet to apply for asylum.
Adams has said New York City is running out of room as hundreds of migrants arrive in the city daily, many bused thousands of miles under a program by border-state governors to protest Joe Biden’s immigration policies. Within the past week, 2,200 more arrived in the city. Most who have arrived since last spring are from Latin America.
Levy said there are no plans to place migrants with children outside the city, but he didn’t rule out the possibility.
Carrión said he wishes other states and cities would accept migrants.
“If every capital of every state in the union would do what Albany, but in particular, what New York City is doing, every major city, if the governor of Texas would go to Austin and Dallas and Houston and San Antonio and care for the people and pay for the services to integrate them into American society and give them a chance at work, at asylum, at refuge, we would be in a far different place.”
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
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