As new curfews loom for migrant shelters across the city over concerns about crime and chaos, neighbors and migrants alike remain unsure what changes the new policies will bring about — and whether they’re needed at all.
“I feel that the issue of violence is not going to stop,” said Colombia Maribel Lopez, a Venezuelan who’s been living in the Big Apple with her kids for six months.
“What we need are more personnel to address the problem. But I don’t think the curfew will stop anything,” she told The Post.
The Adams administration said Saturday that curfews would be implemented at 20 Housing Preservation and Development-run respite centers across the city, expanding curfews already rolled out at a number of migrant centers in January.
Starting Monday, residents at the respite centers will be required to check in each night by 11 p.m. and remain inside until 6 p.m., with exemptions available to those who apply for late-night work, schooling, and medical or legal appointments.
The curfew expansion comes as migrant-related crimes have captured the city’s concerned attention, including a headline-dominating incident where a group of men beat up a pair of NYPD officers in Times Square in January. On Thursday, a 15-year-old boy allegedly shot a tourist while robbing a store just blocks away from the other incient, then fire two shots from his handgun at pursuing officers.
Even before that, a series of brawls, stabbings, drug dealing rings, and crowds of panhandling migrants led concerned neighbors of migrant centers to ask their local lawmakers to take action.
Abha and Jay Jain, who own S&A Leathers near the respite center at the Orchard Street Hotel in Manhattan, said the curfew is “for their own protection.”
“What happened in Times Square. They’re hitting the cops. It gets all of them in trouble,” Abha told The Post.
The couple said when the shelter first opened nearby it upended their street.
“People were hanging around. Parents were letting their kids run around. They made it like a village. We were trying to run a business and they made it like a village street,” Abha said.
“The curfew is fine… A lot of people don’t like them,” she said.
Marawan Magie, who works at Pizza Loves Sauce around the corner near the shelter at the Gatsby Hotel, said the migrants have all been “polite, peaceful” customers and that a curfew isn’t necessary there — but places with problems could benefit from the restrictions.
“If it was me I would focus on the areas that really need [more security].”
Mary Moore, another Venezuelan who has been living in the city with her husband and their two kids for three months, agreed that her current shelter didn’t need a curfew but that other centers where she’s stayed in the city are in desperate need of stricter rules.
“Here it is quiet. Here, I can’t say anything about [problems], while in the previous refugio that I was in at the Row Hotel, there it was very different. There everything was problematic,” she said.
Brazillian Cidri Beye, who has been in NYC for nearly a year with her husband and son, shared a similar sentiment, arguing that anybody who made the perilous journey to America to better their lives should have no problem with a curfew and that only troublemakers will be affected by it.
“To me, [the curfew] doesn’t change anything, because most people who wants to work and establish a life here won’t care about being out at these hours,” she said.
“But I believe that for many immigrants who are here and don’t have the intention of working and creating a life, it could have an effect,” she said, explaining that like Moore she’s seen troublemakers at some of the shelters she’s passed through.
“I’ve seen it, but I haven’t tried to delve deeper. I prefer to stay away from it, so I don’t know the cause of the problem,” she said.