Dozens of migrants were seen on video sleeping on the ground outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on Monday morning after the hotel, which has been serving as a makeshift processing center for asylum seekers, reached capacity over the weekend.
The group of migrants waiting to be taken into the makeshift shelter was so large that individuals were sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder across three full blocks, according to the New York Post.
New York City council majority leader Keith Powers said over the weekend that his team was working with Mayor Eric Adams’s office and others to “address the situation with intake at the Roosevelt Hotel.”
“Right now, it’s essential that we get on top of the inhumane & concerning conditions immediately as we figure out how to change intake,” Powers said in a tweet.
The 1,000 room hotel became the city’s main “asylum seeker arrival center” this year after previously having been closed for almost three years because of the pandemic.
As the self-declared sanctuary city has been slammed with an influx of migrants from the southern border, it has contracted with more than 100 hotels to house asylum seekers in more than 10,000 rooms across the city.
Some 93,200 migrants have arrived in the city since spring 2022, according to the New York Post. More than 2,500 migrants are still arriving to the city weekly.
Adams and 54 other NYC Democratic lawmakers have begged the Biden administration to offer additional federal assistance and to work on slowing the influx of migrants at the border. The White House responded to their plea by offering a federal liaison, but no additional funds.
The city’s struggles are now spilling over into other areas of New York state.
Guests at a Super 8 motel in upstate New York were kicked out without notice earlier this month to make room for migrants being bused in from New York City.
Rotterdam town supervisor Mollie Collins told the Albany Times-Union that a Schenectady County official told her the migrants were transported from Texas to New York City before they were sent via bus to the motel in Rotterdam after the city signed a contract with the Super 8.
Schenectady County’s county manager Rory Fluman said the county was not expecting to receive migrants from the city and that most of the hotels in the county are already at capacity.
“We’re being told they are all asylum-seekers,” Fluman said. The report indicated migrants self-identified as being from Peru, Venezuela and Colombia.
While the Super 8 at times houses people who receive assistance from Schenectady County Department of Social Services, Fluman said none of these people were living at the motel when guests were displaced this week. However, the motel was housing individuals who receive assistance from the Department of Social Services in Montgomery County, which neighbors Schenectady.
Fluman said he expects the migrants will ultimately seek help from the county’s social services system after the city’s help runs out. The city has offered to pay for migrant housing for anywhere from a month to a year.
In May, the town of Colonie in neighboring Albany County went to court after a group of migrants arrived at a motel in town. New York City then sent buses of migrants to two hotels in Albany. Albany County has received more than 400 migrants, according to the report.
Several upstate counties, including Rockland County, are involved in ongoing litigation against the city over the migrant relocation program.