The once packed corner of midtown New York City where hundreds of migrants lived on cardboard and dirty sidewalks pleading to get inside the Roosevelt hotel to be processed sat empty on Thursday.
City officials remain tight-lipped on exactly how the street corner emptied in just a matter of hours and where the migrants are today.
On Thursday, the corner of East 45th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue in Manhattan was empty – and stark difference from the previous days, where it was packed with migrants as city shelters reached capacity.
Residents called on Mayor Eric Adams to do more; the mayor’s office has turned blame to the feds for not addressing the border crisis or providing enough funding.
Videos posted online showed Mayor Eric Adams assessing the scene late Wednesday night, as he was heckled by an irate New Yorker who demanded his resignation for the ongoing migrant crisis.
He told CBS News ‘we’re not hearing enough’ from federal officials to combat the influx of migrants.
But the scene that has become the epicenter of the country’s migrant crisis sat quiet on Thursday morning.
Migrants who slept outside the Roosevelt Hotel for days were cleared from the sidewalk by Thursday morning
The images of migrant men huddled outside in the heat prompted the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless to call out the mayor
Many wonder where the migrants may have gone, after Adams suggested housing the hundreds of migrants who continue to flood New York City streets in tents at Central Park.
Only a small group of migrants remained outside the Roosevelt Hotel and they were seen being transported away in either city buses or Ubers.
City workers and NYPD community affairs officers on the scene told the New York Daily News the migrants were moved at around 8am Thursday to be processed after space opened up.
One security guard also said some were quickly processed and provided with beds in city shelters.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the mayor’s office for comment.
New York is bound by a decades-old consent decree in a class-action lawsuit to provide shelter for those without homes.
As a result, the Roosevelt Hotel and others have become hubs for refugees – within walking distance from Times Square, the World Trade Center memorial site and the Empire State Building.
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.
They had been handed documents telling them to report to the Roosevelt Hotel, which is at capacity housing migrant families.
In a statement on Monday, Eric Adams said: ‘Children and families continue to be prioritized and are found a bed every night.
‘While we at least offered all adults a temporary place to wait off the sidewalks last night, some may have chosen to sleep outside.
‘And, in all honesty, New Yorkers may continue to see that more and more as hundreds of asylum seekers continue to arrive each day.’
Only a handful of migrants remained in front of the Roosevelt Hotel on Thursday, and were transported away on city buses
A security guard watched those passing by outside the Roosevelt Hotel on Thursday
The Roosevelt Hotel serves as a processing center, and houses migrant families
An employee is pictured here cleaning up the corner of East 45th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue after the migrants disappeared
City workers and NYPD community affairs officers on the scene told the New York Daily News the migrants were moved at around 8am Thursday
One security guard also said some were quickly processed and provided with beds in city shelters
But the images of migrant men huddled outside in the heat prompted the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless to call out the mayor.
They said in a statement: ‘There is no dispute that the City has a legal obligation to find an appropriate placement for anyone in need of shelter in a timely fashion.
‘Denying new arrivals placement and forcing people to languish on local streets is cruel and runs afoul of a range of court orders and local laws.’
The organization threatened to sue if something is not done to help those on the street.
A migrant shared with DailyMail.com his referral form – telling him to head to the Roosevelt Hotel for refuge
On Wednesday, the migrants left outside in the heat reached out for food being dropped off by a local volunteer
Some volunteers handed the migrants outside the hotel with charged cellphones
The migrant crisis has been declared a state of emergency in New York. National Guardsmen are seen here bringing water to the Roosevelt Hotel on Thursday
The following day, it was revealed that city officials were considering housing migrants in tents at Central Park, as the migrant crisis became a state of emergency in New York.
The proposed migrant plan, first reported by the Gothamist, also considers 3,000 other locations in New York, including tourist public green spaces, as places to erect emergency housing for the crushing influx of migrants.
In response to the Gothamist report, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said: ‘Everything is on the table.’
Williams-Isom said she believes people are coming from other US cities such as Denver and Chicago when doors close there. New York City, in comparison, has opened a total of 197 sites across the city to help with the issue.
In the last week of July, 2,300 migrants landed in the city to seek asylum. The Roosevelt Hotel has around 1,000 rooms available for migrants.
‘New York City cannot continue to carry the weight of a national problem on our own. It is time for the rest of the nation to step up,’ Williams-Isom warned Wednesday.
She reiterated New York is dealing with the brunt of a country-wide issue. There are currently 15 different languages being spoken outside the Roosevelt Hotel – emblematic of how far-reaching the migrant crisis has become.
This is not the Adams Administration’s migrant crisis plan A or even plan B – it is ‘plan F,’ Williams-Isom said, highlighting how much the city has already done.
The mayor is said to be considering a plan to house migrants in tents at Central Park. Tents erected in the park to treat COVID patients in May 2020 are pictured
The city says more than 93,000 asylum seekers came through the intake system since April 2022.
Some of the thousands of migrants who have arrived in NYC have been been bused in from Florida and Texas, as the states’ conservative governments argue progressive cities should share the burden.
Texas’ governor Greg Abbott has sent about 9,700 asylum seekers to New York City, according to Politico.
Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis has flown about 85 migrants to Massachusetts and California.
Adams responded by sending migrants to red states – with some even being sent as far as South America and China.
The Democrat spent about $50,000 of the city’s money to send 114 migrant households elsewhere – with 28 families sent to Florida with 14 sent to Texas and a few to Colombia and one family to China after being allowed to choose their destination.
Mayor Eric Adams has called the immigration crisis a ‘disaster’ and is asking for help from the federal government. He is pictured on Monday
Migrants outside the hotel had to sleep on cardboard boxes for several days
He also opened 174 emergency shelters and intake centers, while asking for help from the federal government.
The mayor had said: ‘New York City continues to receive thousands of asylum seekers each week, and we have stepped up and led the nation, but this national crisis should not fall on cities alone to navigate. We need a national solution here.’
But last month, the federal government pledged $104.6milllion to help New York City accommodate the migrants.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the money from FEMA would be used for ‘the care and assistance of asylum seekers,’ and would be sent to the city’s Shelter Services Program.
Another $138.4million was previously given to New York City to support the influx of migrants.
