Migrants at Midtown hotel double down to fight move to Mayor Adams’ Red Hook shelter site

Migrants massed in an impromptu camp outside a Midtown hotel stepped up their criticism of the mass shelter the city has planted in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on Tuesday, saying it does not meet the needs of asylum seekers and that they don’t want to go.
Some migrants agreed to tour the Red Hook facility on Tuesday, but returned to the Watson Hotel unconvinced, one migrant said.
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The city had hoped the new Brooklyn relief center, housed in a cruise terminal warehouse in remote Red Hook, would provide precious shelter to some 1,000 migrant men who had been living at the Watson Hotel on W. 57th St. in Hell’s Kitchen.
But many of the men would prefer to sleep on the cold Manhattan cement outside the hotel than relocate to the waterfront shelter, concerned that the accommodations at the warehouse are lacking. Dozens of migrants laid on the sidewalk outside the Watson on Tuesday, wrapped in donated clothing and blankets but many still shivering in the cold.
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“We are standing in solidarity with our brothers and sisters,” Carl Garrison, a minister at the Manhattan Church of Christ, said at a news conference at which several advocates spoke out about the conditions.
Migrants moved to the shelter in Red Hook would be left to sleep on rows of cots and would be forced to go outside to use the bathroom, Garrison said.
“To me that’s not a dignified way to live,” he said.
The shelter, which opened over the weekend, has about 85 to 90 toilets inside, and temperature-controlled showers in trailers outside, said Fabien Levy, a spokesman for Mayor Adams.
Migrants that refused to move to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal are pictured outside the Watson Hotel on 57th Street and 9th Avenue early Tuesday morning. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)
The city has handled a massive influx of migrants in recent months, pushing the city’s shelter system to a breaking point. At a press conference less than two miles from the hotel where migrants are sleeping on the street, President Biden touted federal spending on a new rail tunnel under the Hudson river, but did not address Adams’ continuing pleas for additional federal resources.
This latest chapter started when officials began implementing a plan to move the men from the Watson and repurpose the hotel to host asylum-seeking families with children. Migrants returned from the facility, saying it was inadequate, and began camping on the street outside the hotel as they’d already lost their rooms.
Video from the shelter has shown tightly organized rows of cots. The layout appears to mirror a controversial migrant tent Adams’ administration opened briefly on Randalls Island last year.
Adams said Monday that the shelter was warm and had healthy food.
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“Even the snacks are healthy — we just need to stop the anxiety,” Adams said in a video posted by his office on Twitter.
But many migrants seemed unconvinced, and concerned about the conditions in Brooklyn.
“We’re not here just because we want to protest — we’re here because we want dignified places to stay,” said Keyder Escalona, a 28-year-old migrant from Venezuela. “That’s what we’re asking for.”
Migrants that stayed overnight inside the Watson Hotel are seen moving their belongs to buses and heading to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on Tuesday. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)
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After the news conference, City Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, a Brooklyn Democrat, expressed frustration with the city’s efforts to communicate with migrants about the Red Hook shelter.
“One of the big failures of this moment is that the lack of information is creating a level of fear that these folks are being shuffled to the Brooklyn Cruise terminal, that they are getting picked up by ICE or that they are going to be detained,” Hanif said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
She added that she also opposes the accommodations provided in Red Hook.
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At one point on Tuesday afternoon, two ambulances and a fire truck pulled up, and a migrant man was wheeled out of the hotel on a stretcher. He didn’t speak but was conscious, and it was unclear how he was hurt or what happened.