Manuel, a 24-year-old Venezuelan citizen, has overcome countless hurdles in New York City over the past four months. He found it more exhausting than anything else he had experienced since leaving Caracas, including crossing the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama, waiting anxiously at the US southern border, or being incarcerated in an overcrowded detention center in Laredo, Texas .
Since arriving in the Big Apple — on a bus chartered by Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott of the Republican Party — Manuel has stayed at a tent camp on Randall’s Island (north of Manhattan) and a three-star hotel in Midtown. Today he sleeps in a lot at the Brooklyn cruise terminal, where a thousand cots are lined up like sardines in a can. The site accommodates male migrants traveling alone and offers accommodation for up to a week.
The conditions in which these migrants are living illustrate the difficulties New York authorities have had to deal with the arrival of over 45,000 of them since last spring. Most of them, like Manuel, are asylum seekers. Several have been busted into Manhattan — often without knowing their ultimate destination — by Republican governors in Texas and Florida who are trying to denounce the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
So far, the mayor’s office seems powerless to face the influx. The shelter network has reached capacity due to New York City’s large floating population of homeless people. In recent days, city authorities have been offering migrants free bus tickets to Canada.
As the months pass, the journey these people once understood from their countries of origin becomes a journey to nowhere, and their lives become increasingly precarious.
Carrying a huge pink suitcase – his only luggage – Manuel (a pseudonym) doesn’t know whether to accept a free ticket. His initial attempt to land in another state (where he has a boyfriend) didn’t work out. He shrugs with practiced resignation — the same emotion he felt when he had to leave the Midtown hotel that now only accommodates families for 10 days. One of these families consists of Javier, a former sergeant in the Venezuelan army who deserted, his wife Nazaret and their two children. The youngest is in the stroller; the eldest started school just three days after their arrival.
Manuel, who says he “can do any job,” accepts his circumstances. “It is what it is … we can’t forget to be grateful,” he says, alluding to a riot made by other migrants in difficult situations at the hotel entrance, unhappy with the deportation.
Carlos Herrera, a 44-year-old Ecuadorian who emigrated “to make money and pay off debts,” never thought he would reach New York. He spent several nights sleeping in front of the Midtown hotel’s entrance to protest his forced transfer. “I just started working as a plumber in a neighborhood on the other end [of the city]… but I will lose my job because there is no subway [connection].”
The police eventually overpowered the demonstrators. Mayor Eric Adams – a Democrat with a sense of the dramatic – then spent last week’s coldest night of winter on a bunk in the Brooklyn terminal with around 500 new tenants.
A group of migrants arrive at the makeshift shelter set up at the Brooklyn terminal on February 2. MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO (Getty Images via AFP)
“There’s no place”
NGOs and volunteers have filled gaps in the response, but the steady influx of migrants is frustrating any plan to formalize aid. “New York is on the brink, it’s on the brink of collapse,” reiterates Adams, whose rhetoric is becoming increasingly similar to that of Republican governors in Texas and Florida. He used similar words last January while visiting the border town of El Paso, Texas.
From New York as a “safe haven” – open to all – to “there is no place” to a “national crisis” that deserves a stronger response from Washington, the language is changing rapidly.
Migration pressure is putting the city’s identity to the test. It’s also very painful: look at the suicide attempt by a 26-year-old man in the Brooklyn terminal on Thursday, February 16th.
The host organizations are critical of the state of the makeshift space — the fifth such space set up since the crisis began — which sits on the water’s edge with no public transport and isolated.
“It is in a high risk flood zone and will unnecessarily expose local residents to danger [to the elements] during some of the coldest months of the year,” the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless said in a joint response. “Hotels have always been the best short-term options, as opposed to pitching tents in inaccessible areas of the city affected by flooding.” This statement was in reference to shelters such as the Brooklyn terminal and, before that, the Randall’s Island camp.
The Brooklyn location is a collective dormitory “with no space or privacy…a place that [results in] Uncertainty and outrage,” the two organizations added. “The shortcomings we warned about weeks ago are still in effect, the first being disregard for migrants’ individual needs.”
Herrera had long foreseen this scenario: “Here in the hotel I had my single room with a television. I don’t want TV, I don’t need it – but I want a place where I can rest by myself when I get back from work. I don’t [want to] suffer from other people’s parties, [when they] drink and sing until dawn,” he explains his determination to stay at the Midtown hotel. The protest, which saw Herrera wrapped in a blanket at the door of the hotel along with several dozen migrants, lasted several hours before a peaceful evacuation by police took place.
This migratory crisis, borne mainly by Venezuelans, is split between single men – who are either economic or political migrants – and families who are lucky enough to find housing in the city and a school for their children. But the challenge for the authorities is huge. Mayor Adams calls for federal aid to top up $1 billion
“We continue to overcome both our moral and legal obligations and meet the needs of people arriving in New York, but as the number of asylum seekers continues to grow, we desperately need the support of both our state and federal governments,” he said he said late January.
Javier and Nazaret – who spend their days pushing their daughter’s stroller through the streets until the cold brings them back to the hotel – bemoan the poor food (“the baby only gets milk”) and the lack of clothing (“they send us to charities, they have nothing here”).
“I’m looking for work in whatever [sector]… Construction, hospitality: we cannot return to Venezuela unless things change. It was impossible to survive there. There are strikes and protests every day. But freedom is very expensive here – we have nothing to support ourselves,” explains Javier, who tells EL PAÍS that he and his wife have received no support in processing their asylum applications.
Manuel contradicts him: “As soon as you cross it [US] Border, at the detention center they are taking you to, they will screen you for “credible fear” to determine if the reasons you are giving for your asylum request are true. That’s where the proceedings begin.”
Manuel shows a crumpled piece of paper he received in downtown Laredo – his only guide to finding his way around New York. Or in Canada, “because I was told that it’s easier to get papers and a work permit there.”
For now, the pilgrimage of thousands has already marked a new destination: the Roxham Road border crossing, through which more than 39,000 migrants entered Canada last year. In December 2022 alone, 4,600 made it through. As procedures have been carefully managed — and the Canadian government aims to welcome 465,000 new permanent residents in 2023 — overwhelmed New York City authorities see their northern neighbor as the only option to defuse the impending crisis.
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