New York City’s new migrant “welcome center” at the former four-star Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan was already slammed Monday with fresh arrivals.
Migrants were hauled in on buses.
“I want to stay here, but they are making us wait on the bus, and then they are taking us somewhere else,” said a 23-year-old single man from Venezuela who only gave his first name, Ulysses.
” ‘No,’ I told him, ‘I wanted to stay here,’ ” said the migrant, referring to a city worker at the hotel, which is only housing families.
“They are telling me I’m going somewhere else. I don’t know where. … I came here from Venezuela.I want to stay here!’
Mayor Eric Adams said Monday morning that more than 800 asylum-seekers had already been through the landmark art-deco former hotel, which opened as a processing center Friday, near Grand Central Terminal.
“We opened the Roosevelt Hotel a few days ago, 800 rooms were filled or 800 people went in that location at a capacity of a little over 1,000 — that’s how smooth and quick this is moving,” Adams said at a news conference, where he was joined by Gov. Kathy Hochul in begging the White House for more help to deal with migrant crisis.
More than 5,800 migrants arrived in the five boroughs in just last week alone, Adams said — on top of more than 60,000
nypost.com/2023/05/22/nyc-migrants-at-teeming-roosevelt-hotel-bussed-off/
New York City is estimated to be spending about $8 million a day to house the 37,500 asylum seekers currently in shelters, per Bloomberg.
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) May 23, 2023