NYC will now house growing influx of migrants arriving in buses from Texas in 14 HOTELS across the Big Apple – as City Hall now says it will no longer use Midtown’s $700-a-night The Row as a shelter for 600 families
New York is set to house the increasing number of migrants arriving by buses from Texas in 14 hotels across the city – as plans to use $700-a night The Row are shelved.
Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Manuel Castro revealed that City Hall has been forced to strike emergency deals with the hotels because the shelter system is overloaded.
Five more buses arrived on Thursday from Texas, carrying migrants relocated by Texas Gov Greg Abbott.
The same number of buses arrived on Wednesday, which was a record number for migrants arriving at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
Castro revealed that more than 6,000 migrants have needed help from the city since May, including at least 750 on the buses that Abbott began sending them to New York from Texas.
Two weeks ago City Hall stated that 11 hotels were being used to help ease the pressure, but that has now been upped to 14.
City Hall has also confirmed that they are no longer planning to house 600 families at the luxury The Row hotel near Times Square in NYC which is regularly packed with tourists.
New York City will rent 5,000 hotel rooms to accommodate migrants arriving on buses from Texas in addition to the 1,000 already announced by Mayor Eric Adams.
During a press conference yesterday, Castro also explained that both Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul appealed to officials in other states for help housing the migrants.
However, he did not identify any of the other cities or leaders who have been contacted to assist in the support scheme.
He said: ‘Unlike Gov. Abbott, our mayor and our governor are showing true leadership by actively coordinating with the White House and federal government and governors across the country and mayors across the country to see how we can work together to address the need to resettle asylum-seekers.’
Mayor Adams announced last week that hotels in District Two, where were ‘opening daily and serving as shelters.’
He also said that any children who travel across the border would be integrated into the school system and will receive supplies and backpacks.
Andrea Catsimatidis, chair of the Manhattan Republican Party, said: ‘NYC is looking for an extra 5,000 hotel rooms to house bused in migrants.
‘So now we have illegal immigrants instead of tourists in our hotels. Imagine that impact on our economy, crime, and tax dollars.’
The NYC Hotel Association has said operators are ready to put up thousands of migrants to help the city’s housing problems.
Vijay Dandapani, president of the group representing nearly 300 hotels, likened the migrant crisis to the homeless shelter situation of the pandemic.
He told DailyMail.com: ‘Individual hotels who may or may not be our members could get involved in this, and in the past during the height of the pandemic, we were directly involved in moving people from homeless shelters to hotels.
‘We are there ready again, with our stakeholders in the city to do the necessary thing if that is what asked of us.
‘Everyone is doing this voluntarily it depends on how they view it. You are certainly not going to see the luxury five star hotels participant it but three or four starts as they did during the pandemic, may help as that market has not yet come back to pre-pandemic levels.
‘We ourselves are ready and we have done it in the past and we’ll do it again. It’s a dynamic situation early next week.’
Abbott started moving migrants to DC in April to protest President Biden’s ‘irresponsible open border policies’ before also bussing them into the Big Apple.
Texas has also started making the migrants were bracelets with barcodes on them, before cutting them off when they arrive in New York or their other destinations.
Abbott’s spokesperson said that they are ‘standard protocol’ for voluntary transportation, adding: ‘They have been used during times of natural disasters like hurricanes when needing to transport people to safety.
‘This process also helps ensure we are only transporting migrants who have been processed and released by the federal government with federal documentation that allows them to move about the country.’
Last weekend, Customs and Border Protection’s migrant encounter tracker for Fiscal Year 2022 surpassed the two million mark for the first time in United States history, with the majority of the fourth quarter yet to come.
According to the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Thursday’s buses carried 223 migrants.
Passengers included several women carrying infants swaddled in blankets and a man in a wheelchair helped off the bus.