A year after the first asylum seeker buses left Texas, is NYC ready for more?

Local officials are bracing themselves for a new wave of asylum seekers to arrive in the city as a pandemic-era border policy is set to expire Thursday, which could potentially send additional migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border.

It's been about a year since officials in border states began busing migrants to largely Democratic cities in the north, including into New York City. The arrival of over 60,800 people has strained the city's shelter system and could cost over $4 billion, while also raising concerns over access to resources available to other New Yorkers.

Several city lawmakers and non-profit providers who spoke with Gothamist describe chaos and confusion when it comes to the Mayor Eric Adams administration’s handling of the first wave of asylum seekers as the city enters year two of the mass migration. They say that’s left them and volunteers already stretched-thin to pick up the slack, with little coordination or transparency from the administration, as many migrants remain stranded in temporary facilities without laundry or cooking appliances.

This comes as Adams has repeatedly warned that the situation is unsustainable and is expected to cost the city billions of dollars, testing the limits of a sanctuary city and its safety net programs. When asked about the city’s plans for the expected influx in the coming weeks, officials’ approach appeared unchanged from last fall: they said they were still scrambling to find more space to house people.

“We're reacting to what's happening instead of really preparing for what's to come and then setting up systems long-term. because we don't see this ending anytime soon,” said Theodore Moore, policy lead of New York Immigration Coalition.

Last week, buses with migrants began arriving again at the Port Authority Bus Terminal after a months-long lull. Inside a gated-off quadrant of the foyer, National Guard officers hauled cases of water bottles, while volunteers handed out takeout containers of food, bags of clothes and toiletries to dozens of new arrivals.

“We're just trying to catch up here,” said Manuel Castro, the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, who was greeting newcomers at the Port Authority Wednesday morning.

“It's quite difficult to catch your breath when you continue to receive people, especially in this way,” he added.

Absent federal intervention, which Adams has intensified his ongoing pleas for, the city is hamstrung in how it can respond, relying on over 120 hotels as emergency shelters and a coterie of good samaritans and non profits that have been leading the charge to find the cash-strapped newcomers extra resources like clothing, job training and legal help.

Caring for the new arrivals is estimated to cost the city over $4 billion through next May, leading the mayor to ring fiscal alarm bells.

The Adams administration acknowledges the need to escape emergency mode, releasing a “blueprint” in early March with next steps to move the city into “steady state operations.” Mayoral spokesperson Kate Smart also pointed to steps it’s already taken to do so, like its plan to enroll and integrate new migrant students, launched last year, and shrink the ballooning shelter population. But some of the key strategies in its recent blueprint, like a new agency focused on the response and a 24/7 arrival center, have yet to materialize – and it remains unclear when they will.

When asked on Wednesday about critics’ concerns on the city’s response and what else the city was doing to prepare for the expected influx, besides looking for hotels, Castro blamed the federal government.

“We need to have a short term and longer term strategy,” he said. “On the short term, it's been quite difficult to really make sure that we're meeting this humanitarian crisis.”

A strained system

Rev. Terry Troia vividly remembers the day in April of last year when an asylum seeker family crossed the threshold of the Reformed Church of Huguenot Park in Staten Island where she was delivering a sermon, months before the buses of asylum seekers began arriving from Texas at a steady place. Their arrival surprised Troia, whose nonprofit Project Hospitality now operates a shelter for asylum seekers in a hotel near Freshkills Park.

“They were not assigned to us by the city of New York. They did not come to stay in a hotel in Staten Island,” she said. “Someone had taken them in and put them up in a basement.”

Since that spring, more than 60,800 asylum seekers have arrived in the city and been offered a place to stay, according to the mayor’s office. About 37,500 are currently staying in New York City shelters — close to triple the shelter count last September.

Without the tools to move into longer-term homes — like work permits, access to housing vouchers — the new arrivals have pushed the city’s already-struggling shelter system past its limits, the mayor and other city officials say.

“Every service in the city is going to be impacted by the asylum seeker crisis,” Adams repeated in an April press conference calling for federal intervention. “Every service.”

"What's next? Without working papers and the ability to access housing?” said Council Oversight Committee Chair Gale Brewer, who has worked closely on fielding new migrants’ concerns. “I don't know where they’re going to go…how long they're going to last in these hotels."

As of May 4, there are more than 77,400 New Yorkers living in homeless shelters — plus nearly 10,000 people living in the city’s Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers (HERRCs), large-scale specialized shelters for newly arrived migrants that offer onsite medical care, among other services. A year prior, about 46,000 New Yorkers were sleeping in shelters, according to city data.

The increase in emergency shelters and other asylee resources is expected to cost $1.4 billion by the end of June, according to the Office of Management and Budget. If asylum seekers continue to arrive at the same rate, the office projects the city will spend more than twice that amount in the next year.

“No municipality can absorb this kind of cost without cracking,” said OMB director Jacques Jiha at an April press conference.

Groups who help feed, house and clothe asylum seekers say it’s financially and logistically difficult caring for the newest New Yorkerse in the absence of federal action.

“The infrastructure does not exist in this city to really address emergencies like this,” said Asenhat Gomez, deputy director of programs at Williamsburg-based El Puente.

Survival mode

In the days and weeks after the first Port Authority arrivals last year, community groups and city workers rapidly — and somewhat haphazardly — rolled out the welcome wagon.

But advocates, elected officials and community groups say that the emergency response of the past year isn’t feasible long-term.

Back then, groups greeted migrants at the bus terminal, collected supplies and spun up emergency shelters, including some that were harshly criticized by organizers and elected officials. Meanwhile, New York City schools welcomed thousands of new students and grappled with a shortage of bilingual instructors.

Blanca Alarcón, who’s originally from Columbia, has lived in a Midtown hotel shelter with her husband and their three children since December. She said that they’ve gotten some basic medical care and the children have been enrolled in school.

“We’re very grateful for the program and the help we’ve received,” she said in Spanish.

But hotel living in particular can be a strain on migrant families, said Desirée Joy Frias of South Bronx Mutual Aid.

“You’re not supposed to live in a hotel,” she said. “It’s not built for it, it’s not sustainable and it ends up becoming a trap for many people.”

Some hotels are far from public transportation. Others lack laundry facilities, leaving the cash-strapped new arrivals to wash their clothes in bathtubs. Hotel rooms generally don’t have kitchen facilities, making it difficult to prepare food. Many migrants have long commutes to work and are forced to rely on fast food, Frias said.

Migrants’ lack of official work permits, delays in immigration proceedings and information gaps can also cause more problems as time goes on. Some migrants have to turn to underpaid and insecure jobs that are ripe for exploitation, advocates said.

“You’re forcing them into the underbelly of the capitalist economy,” Frias said. “You’re forcing them into unsafe, illegal working conditions where they have no protections.”

Frias and others urged the city to get out of the emergency mindset that’s characterized the city’s asylum seeker response so far.

“Fire is an emergency,” Frias said. “Human beings moving is not an emergency.”

Mounting costs

The emergency mindset — literally — could be inflating the city’s costs.

Adams’s emergency declaration in August of last year allowed the city to choose asylum seeker service providers based on speed and convenience rather than the usual competitive bidding process. Brewer flagged security, food and even laundry costs as pricier than expected. For example, HappyNest, the laundry company for HERRCS, charges $43 for a 27-pound bag.

"It sounds more expensive than a local laundromat," she said. "You would think with so much laundry, the city could get a bulk rate."

“We're gonna need more oversight to make sure we're not getting bilked,” Lander added when asked about pricing concerns.

When asked about potentially inflated costs, mayoral spokesperson Kate Smart said emergencies inevitably cost extra money. And federal and state aid allocated so far won’t cover the costs. Congress allocated $800 million for all localities nationwide to respond to the migrant influx. And the state’s recently released budget includes up to $1 billion for shelters. But that’s still just a fraction of the city’s estimated total through the middle of next year.

Lawmakers across political divides are laying blame on the feet of the federal government, saying that the city is being left to fend for itself. In his harshest critique, Adams said the Biden administration “failed” New York City, especially for not expediting the work permit process, so they can support themselves.

“If we're going to let this many asylum seekers into our country….We just don't say, ‘Here, fend for yourself,’” said Council Member Robert Holden, a moderate Democrat from central Queens. “The city is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The mayor is begging now the Biden administration to do something, but we're not hearing any answers.”

“The lion's share now is in D.C.,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams in an interview, before later adding: “The weight of solving the country's broken immigration system can't fall on New York City.”

Another road forward

While city officials are putting the lion’s share of the blame on Washington, there are some tools within the city’s purview that alleviate the strain on the various safety net systems, like implementing some of the detailed plans in the mayor’s blueprint that calls for a series of "steady state" initiatives, like ramping up legal support for asylum seekers.

“While the plan is good, if you write it down on paper and actually don't implement it, then it's not worth anything,” said Moore, of New York Immigration Coalition.

Comptroller Brad Lander and scores of other officials remain in the dark about the Office of Asylum Seeker Operations promised in the plan, for example.

“This just speaks to the lack of urgent and expeditious action to get it done,” said Lander of the months-long wait and lack of details about the new agency’s structure.

The city needs to invest more resources toward resolving the underlying problem areas — shrinking the perennially high shelter population by fast-tracking residents into long-term housing, said Lander and Councilmember Shahana Hanif, the head of the immigration committee.

They also argue that the city needs to invest more money, $70 million by Lander’s estimate, into legal services to clear the biggest hurdle now for many to get a work permit: filing an asylum application.

“It feels like we are moving backwards,” Hanif said. “While the temporary shelter model is a start, a year in, for folks to be warehoused in these shelters is not a response.”

“We are not doing a great job. We've done the bare minimum,” she said.