Well, that was short-lived!
The Biden administration’s promise of staffers to assist with applications from tens of thousands of asylum seekers was apparently just a two-week deal — and now the Big Apple has been left to handle the migrant paperwork nightmare on its own, The Post has learned.
Local leaders like Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams had hailed the feds for assigning clerical workers to help cut through red tape for migrants — but the help from the Biden administration amounted to only a “pop-up” office that stayed around for just two weeks, sources said.
The departure of the fed workers from the Lower Manhattan location on Beaver Street came even though there was plenty of work to do.
Over the 14 days — which ended Oct. 6 — the federal contractors processed 1,700 work authorizations for migrants.
That figure accounted for almost all of the roughly 2,100 work application that were filed by migrants in the city’s care.
But on its own the city has only filed about 400 work applications for the 65,000 migrants in city care — which led to recent headlines about how disappointing the figures were for the number of asylum seekers applying to work.
NYC officials who spoke to the Post exclaimed how helpful the paperwork office had been and urged its quick return.
“I’m very surprised,” a city government source said, of the departure.
“I thought they were in it for the long haul.”
The Department of Homeland Security has dodged The Post’s questions for days asking about the center and their federal workers in NYC.
The federal workers were touted by city and state leaders as a big get from the Biden Administration as they implored the White House in recent months for help with the massive migrant surge, which has seen some 135,000 enter the city.
In announcing the fed workers in August, Hochul told NY1 that Biden was “surging” staffers into the Big Apple to help with the crisis. But she left no hit that the surge would only last two weeks.
“I don’t know the number yet, but people who work for Homeland Security to literally show up in Manhattan and make themselves available to allow us to start processing thousands of people so they can apply for asylum legally,” Hochul said in August.
Few details emerged though over the next few weeks about how the federal government was planning to help, except that about 50 workers would have boots on the ground in NYC.
When the Post revealed in late September that DHS staffers had secured the fifth floor of an office building at 25 Beaver St. the governor’s office hailed the federal help as what she dubbed the “Month of Action on asylum seekers.”
Again, she failed to say that the workers would stay just two weeks, though sources said New York leaders were aware of the time limit.
This past week Hochul pleaded for more help from DHS after her second White House sit-down — but notably made no mention that the workers had all left New York City.
City Hall staff told The Post they had been told the clinic was a short-term setup but the Biden administration and Hochul never said publicly that the promised aid was a one-week clinic by contractors in Lower Manhattan or a few weeks of help from DHS staffers.
Mayor Eric Adams called on the federal government to send more help on Friday morning but made no mention of the feds’ departure.
Hochul’s office did not respond for comment, but City Hall in a statement hailed the “unprecedented partnership” that “allowed more than 1,700 work authorization applications to be processed in less than two weeks.”
“[It’s] a model for how we can work together across levels of government to tackle this national crisis, and we appreciate our partners for their collaboration. We look forward to continued joint efforts . . . ” said Adams spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak.
Additional reporting by Georgett Roberts