Seventy-four migrants alternated turns sheltering in a Queen’s basement until a neighbor filed a complaint, leading to the migrants getting kicked out of the store. Simultaneously, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, D, is expressing frustration with the immigration system and advocating for changes to a decades-old sanctuary city law that offers certain protections to migrants in cities illegally.
Forty migrants were taking shelter in a New York City furniture store’s basement containing 14 bunk beds and 13 mattresses on the floor. The neighbor filed a complaint about the e-bikes migrants parked at the back of the building overnight, calling it a fire risk.
The furniture store owner, Ebou Sarr, received two violations for running the unsanctioned migrant shelter. Sarr stands by allowing the migrants to stay, emphasizing the hardships each person was going through.
Some migrants who were sheltering inside the store said they now try to sleep in the Subway as they look for any type of shelter.
“They don’t want to go,” Sarr said. “They don’t want to go through that again. This morning most of them called me, they said what they’ve been through is, they have never been through that last night. They’ve been through hell last night trying to find a place to stay. And they were, they were fine. We were fine. We were just, you know, doing what we have to do.”
Around 65,000 asylum-seekers are currently in New York City’s system receiving services and housing. More than 180,000 migrants are in the city, and the majority are in need of basic necessities while they wait for court dates amidst a backlog of asylum claims.
Adams said the housing shortage is only going to get worse as the growing demand further shrinks New York City’s supply.
“We have an inventory issue in the city and people should not be living in unsafe environments,” Adams said. “We’re going to do our job to investigate them, give them the appropriate shelter system. But the reality is with 180,000 people entering the city also looking for housing, over 65,000 currently in our system, if we don’t build more, we’re going to be building more problems.”
Adams also said it is not only a lack of housing contributing to a growing migrant crisis, but a lack of opportunity as thousands wait for work permits.
“How about taking those thousand people, training them for all these jobs we have available, so they’re not sitting around all day every day for months,” Adams said. “There’s a human element to this. You don’t have to be a behavioral scientist to state that we’re creating a terrible environment.”
Adams is challenging a portion of a sanctuary city law that prohibits the city from involving or alerting federal immigration officials to protect migrants from potential deportation.
Instead, Adams wants to cooperate with federal officials when migrants commit crimes in the city.
“I don’t believe people who are violent in our city should have the privilege of being in our city,” Adams said. “Like the individual did a serious crime, then got out and assaulted and did a robbery, you don’t have the right to be in our city and tarnish the overwhelming number i hear following the rules.”
A recent Monmouth University poll found that the majority of Americans believe illegal immigration is a “very serious problem.” The poll’s release comes as President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump plan head to the border on Thursday, Feb. 29.
