Migrants have been forced to sleep outside New York City‘s Roosevelt Hotel for a third day in a row – while city officials continue to beg the federal government for aid.
More than 97,000 migrants have been sent to NYC since April 2022, with roughly 57,000 currently being housed in makeshift shelters across the city.
But the crisis has swelled once more- leaving hundreds of migrants from all over the world sleeping on sidewalks during the mid-summer heat in Midtown Manhattan.
Pictures from Wednesday morning show the tired and disheveled asylum seekers waking up from their sleep to stand in the line outside the migrant hotel once again – with hopes that they will be allowed in today.
New York is bound by a decades-old consent decree in a class-action lawsuit to provide shelter for those without homes.
Pictures from Wednesday morning show the tired asylum seekers waking up from their sleep to stand in the line outside the migrant hotel once again – with hopes that they will be allowed in today
The migrants – hailing from many different countries in South America and Africa – are waiting to be let into the temporary shelter
They have slept on cardboard on the ground for days while waiting their turn to get into the Roosevelt Hotel, Midtown
More than 97,000 migrants have been sent to New York City since April 2022, with roughly 57,000 currently being housed in makeshift shelters across the city
And the city has been hit particularly hard by the migrant crisis as conservative governors in Florida and Texas bus asylum seekers into the Big Apple.
As a result, Adams — who has called the immigration crisis a ‘disaster’— has opened 174 emergency shelters and intake centers.
The Roosevelt Hotel and others have since become hubs for refugees – within walking distance from Times Square, the World Trade Center memorial site and the Empire State Building.
The hotel is not just a relief center to house migrant families, but it also acts as an arrival center so people can get access to vaccines and food they may need.
For the past three days, migrants from Burundi, Venezuela, Madagascar, and a handful of other countries have been left waiting for a room at the hotel.
But even if new methods come in to ease the swell of migrants this summer – the issues will not be resolved for at least another 10 days, according to experts.
Josh Goldfein, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, told DailyMail.com: ‘They’re trying to set up a new tent in Queens. Once that’s set up it’ll take some pressure off the system, but once they finalize the arrangements it takes them 10 days before it’s ready.
‘Even if they announce it today, it’ll be another 10 days at least.’
People sleeping on the ground outside the Roosevelt Hotel on Tuesday night
On Tuesday night, the migrants were still seen outside the hotel. They are waiting their turn to be allowed inside
The Roosevelt Hotel and others have since become hubs for refugees – within walking distance from Times Square, the World Trade Center memorial site and the Empire State Building
‘I want a better life,’ one migrant told DailyMail.com from the queue outside the chaotic migrant epicenter on Tuesday morning.
The immense number of migrants arriving from southern states continues to rise – as a result of policies that caused thousands of asylum seekers to overrun the US-Mexico border.
Over the weekend, the migrants were handed small red tickets with digits on them – and once in a while hotel workers would come out and call numbers to let people inside the air-conditioned lobby.
Others, desperately pushing closer to the front to get inside, were left to wait outside in the New York City heat.
The desperate people looking to get inside the hotel early on Tuesday morning were speaking a number of languages, including Spanish, French and Arabic.
Mahmouth, a migrant from Diungame in Senegal, has been waiting on the streets of New York City for five days, desperate for a spot to rest his head.
He told DailyMail.com: ‘We’re night and day here. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.’
Savi Khalil, from Mauritania, arrived in New York two months ago, before being transferred to Ohio and moving back to the Big Apple. He was living in the Magma Hotel in Queens before being thrown out.
He told DailyMail.com from the line on Tuesday: ‘They moved all of us out – they said they wanted to move a family in.’
Khalil was then put into one of the city’s shelters but has tried his shot at getting into the Roosevelt Hotel.
He added: ‘My friends said they’ve been here 3 days. They slept here on the street for three days. I want a better life. I wish them a better life. We are suffering in our country.
‘We don’t have nothing to protect us from the heat. We can’t stay here night after night. The application process is so slow. Since the morning, they haven’t taken one person and more people keep coming.’
When asked why he wants to migrate to the US, he said the country is a ‘place of freedom and dignity.’
The desperate people looking to get inside the hotel early on Tuesday morning were speaking a number of languages, including Spanish, French and Arabic
Migrants rest in their space in the queue early on Wednesday morning
Yesterday, migrants from around the world who were forced to sleep on the sidewalks of New York City over the past few days had to endure an eight-hour bus trip from Buffalo back to the Big Apple because they weren’t properly processed.
An advocate for the migrants told DailyMail.com on Tuesday the New York City government set up a program that cover migrant housing in the upstate city of Buffalo.
But if the migrants arrive in Buffalo and have not yet been processed, they have to take an eight-hour bus ride back to the Roosevelt Hotel to get their documents.
Once there, the migrants have been forced to wait in line for days at a time.
It is only after they get their documents taken care of, that they can return to Buffalo.
‘It’s a terrible rollout,’ said Sergio, of the Mutual Aid Coalition. ‘That’s on Republicans and Democrats.’
Over the past few weeks, New York City officials have bused more than 400 migrants to Erie County.
They comprise a mix of single adults and families, who are now spread out across three different hotels in the Buffalo area.
Some were brought to the Western New York city by a former COVID testing company, which has a set up just a block away from the Roosevelt Hotel as desperate migrants continue to wait for shelter outside.
