Politics & Government Migrants Refuse To Leave NYC Hotel For New Shelter Asylum seekers staged a tent protest — that drew police — over their concerns about the new Brooklyn Cruise Terminal shelter. Reply
Migrants who crossed the border from Mexico into Texas walk through the Port Authority bus station in Manhattan after arriving by bus on Aug. 25, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
NEW YORK CITY — Asylum seekers refused to leave a Manhattan hotel’s cozy confines after they got a cold, hard look at the city’s new migrant shelter in Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.
Many migrants who were slated to be moved from the Watson Hotel in Hell’s Kitchen this weekend instead set up tents outside the West 57th Street building. Their protest prompted showdowns with NYPD cops that continued into Monday and calls for solidarity from advocates, who argued the Brooklyn shelter is inhumane.
“After being forced to choose between the atrocious conditions at Red Hook Cruise terminal and the street, our immigrant neighbors are going to be camping out of Hotel Watson,” tweeted Washington Square Park Mutual Aid. “Apartments not shelters. Permanent housing not detention camps.”
City officials this weekend began to move asylum seekers who are single men to Brooklyn Cruise Terminal to make space for more migrant families. The 1,000-bed shelter is the city’s fifth large-scale facility for an influx of migrants who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, largely to escape political chaos in Venezuela.
But asylum seekers were unhappy with conditions at the new shelter, which they said had only basic beds, lack of adequate heating and few bathrooms, ABC7 first reported. City Hall officials disputed those assertions. They said the building is heated and temperature-controlled, with about 85 to 90 toilets and assigned storage spaces for every person housed there.
Migrants Refuse To Leave NYC Hotel For New Shelter
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