New York City urges migrants to find shelter elsewhere, but many don’t know where to turn
At The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the Sunday afternoon Spanish-language service is about to start.
Nearly 50 people chat over coffee and snacks as a pastor rehearses some music with the pianist by the altar in an adjacent room.
There are men, women and children, most of whom have recently arrived in New York from border states.
One of them is 24-year-old Anderson Fuentes, who has been in the city for just over a week. Fuentes is from a city 200 miles east of Caracas, Venezuela, called Barcelona.
He is one of thousands of migrants facing challenges while trying to build a new life in the United States.
“I left Venezuela three months and 27 days ago searching for the American dream,” he said. “I had $54 in my pocket.”
Fuentes traveled through neighboring Colombia, crossed the treacherous Darién Gap to get to Panama and then he moved up through Central America and Mexico.
When he crossed into the United States, he turned himself in to border agents. After spending two weeks at a migrant detention center, he ended up in a shelter in El Paso, Texas, waiting for whatever would come next.
“By chance, I learned that there were free buses for migrants heading to New York and Chicago and I chose to come here,” he explained.
At night, Fuentes sleeps at one of New York’s migrant shelters in the borough of Queens with hundreds of other migrants and asylum-seekers.
He is also here to find resources to start his asylum application and the other documents he needs to get work authorization.
“I just need to do the paperwork and process my work permit so I am able to start working to help my family,” he said.
Available resources
The church has become a sort of a meeting point for people like Fuentes. There are some English-language classes and there is usually food available several times a day. This is all being run by volunteers, many of them migrants and asylum-seekers themselves.
Gabriel Daudt, a businessman from Brazil who arrived in the US five years ago and lives in the community, volunteers on Thursdays to offer some answers to the many questions people have. He said that about 50 to 60 people come on that day.
“It’s a new world for them, so we [get] all types of questions — from arranging the housing situation, to schooling for their children,” Daudt said. “We also help them get basic documents, as some of them just carry with them the papers they received at the border.”
Adjusting to a new city
Pastor Juan Carlos Ruiz, known for his human rights advocacy, connects migrants to organizations that can provide legal aid, since there is no staff attorney on-site. He also helps them make sense of a new city.
“They are very confused in terms of how to navigate the legal system. That’s one. But I think more than anything, many are really seeking a way to make ends meet,” Ruiz said. “Many of them are really [facing] growing despair because they [have been] here for six, seven months and people cannot really do whatever is necessary for them to get on their feet.”
The Mayor’s office said that 90,000 migrants and asylum-seekers have arrived in New York since the spring of 2022. And while the number of people crossing the border into the US has decreased in recent months, migrants continue to arrive at the Port Authority bus terminal in Midtown Manhattan each week.
Emergency shelters
New York City has opened more than 185 emergency shelters, including 13 large-scale humanitarian relief centers. But with 56,200 migrants currently living there, the shelter population is at an all-time high.
Last week, Mayor Eric Adams said asylum-seekers who have spent “significant” time in shelters will get 60-day deadlines to find a place to live or reapply and get back in line for public shelters.
Adams is not only nudging those in city shelters to find somewhere else to live, he is also asking those who are planning to head north from the southern border to “consider another city to settle in in the US,” as there is no guarantee New York will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals.
Adams said he plans to distribute this message on bright yellow flyers in both English and Spanish across border towns.
“We have no more room in the city.”
“We have no more room in the city,” Adams said during a press conference on Jun. 19. “We have been very clear that we need to allow asylum-seekers to work. We need the economic support of the federal government, and we need to ensure that there is a real decompression strategy throughout the entire country,” he added.
The announcement has left advocates with a lot of questions about what will happen when large numbers of migrants start needing housing without stable jobs. It has also left many confused on what to do and where to go next.
Many of the migrants did not want to be interviewed, but said they have only heard rumors about the 60-day policy and have not been given any information about it.
But 21-year-old Marcelino José Estee Buitrago from Venezuela said, “If you have to leave after 60 days, they could [just] process your paperwork faster, so you can get a job and don’t end up on the streets.”
For Fuentes at the Lutheran Church in Brooklyn, he is focused on his immigration process and work documents and said he is also unaware of the 60-day deadline. His mother, siblings, wife and 3-year-old son are relying on him, and he said he wants to provide as much as he can for them.
“I would like that my family does not lack anything,” he said. “If I see them happy, I will be happy.”
Those are dreams for the future. Today, Fuentes and thousands of other migrants like him have more immediate and pressing obstacles to overcome.
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