Hundreds of migrants wait hours in freezing NYC temps for an open shelter bed

Migrant adults who still need a place to stay after their 30 days in New York City's shelter system expire are now being sent to a former school in the East Village to reapply for housing — a change that’s leading hundreds of people to wait hours in the cold, hoping for a new placement.

On Monday, the line outside the migrant processing center at St. Brigid School stretched down 7th Street and Avenue B. Migrants carrying duffle bags, backpacks and bags of their belongings braced against freezing temperatures behind police barricades. Some wore only hoodies and no gloves.

“You don't have human rights," said Mark Miller, an immigrant from Russia who arrived in the city in May and was waiting in line for a new shelter bed. "You're nobody, you're not American homeless, you're immigrant homeless."

“It's different, believe me," Miller added. "I feel it, and all these people feel it the same.”

Earlier this week, the city began directing migrants who have received 30-day eviction notices and still need a shelter bed to St. Brigid to reapply for temporary housing. The site, run by the New York City emergency management agency, opened last month as a “reticketing” center for migrants who wanted a plane ticket out of the city.

City officials say the St. Brigid site will also help adult migrants who have been kicked out of shelter to find a new bed.

“As a way to streamline, we said if you need new placement, go to St. Brigid,” City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak said. “We’re adding staffing there now.”

The long lines outside of St. Brigid, a shuttered Catholic school, on Monday evening came as the city issued a code blue weather emergency, which eases shelter restrictions when temperatures take a dip.

NYCEM officials said some migrants who were in the line at St. Brigid on Monday night were assigned temporary cots in emergency facilities that operate during a code blue, while others were sent to a Bronx waiting room. Many in the latter group slept on chairs or the floor, videos taken by migrants and sent to Gothamist show.

Outside St. Brigid, migrants said they had waited 12 to 15 hours daily in line and didn't always make it inside before the site closes at the end of the day.

A few newcomers told Gothamist they’d been sleeping on the street or in the park nearby, returning to the queue early the next day in hope of a shelter placement.

“They have us bouncing from one place to another,” said 28-year-old Frank Ramirez, who had been waiting outside St. Brigid on Monday since 7 a.m. and came to the city from Venezuela.

Ramirez said he'd lacked a bed to sleep on since Saturday, when he was kicked out of his shelter and told to go to the Bronx waiting room. From there, Ramirez said, he was told to go somewhere that didn’t exist and was then redirected to St. Brigid.

“We understand that we don’t want to be burdens on this country and what they are doing is social work, but we’re also human, they shouldn’t trick us like children and tell us to go somewhere where there is no room,” Ramirez said in Spanish.

Some newcomers on the line had one or two differently colored paper wristbands — like those distributed at bars and clubs — where city officials had written down each date the person had checked in at St. Brigid. Many said they'd gone hours without eating or drinking and didn't have access to a bathroom while they waited.

The city began limiting shelter stays for adult migrants to one month starting in September, saying there was no more room to house new arrivals. The policy is part of Mayor Eric Adams' efforts to roll back a 40-year-old right-to-shelter consent decree that's guaranteed a bed in a city shelter to anyone who asks for it. Adams has said the law wasn’t designed to accommodate the 65,000 new arrivals the city is sheltering.

“What we are seeing right now is what we have been predicting for many, many months, that it is very difficult because our capacity is full right now,” Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said during a City Hall press briefing Tuesday. “We’re running out of staff, we’re running of money, we’re running out of space.”

Copies of the 30-day notices reviewed by Gothamist show migrants are told the date they must vacate the shelter by and are instructed to speak with a social worker if they want to discuss other shelter options. Migrants are also given a MetroCard and directed to St. Brigid or a spillover waiting room in the Bronx's Bathgate neighborhood.

EVLovesNYC, an East Village-based nonprofit, distributed nearly 300 hot meals to migrants waiting outside St. Brigid on Monday afternoon, as well as cups of water and croissants. Some of those waiting to enter the site rushed to snag a container of food after organizers estimated there were 400 people in the line.

Site workers, meanwhile, distributed blankets to the migrants.

On Tuesday, many migrants were back waiting outside St. Brigid as early as 4 a.m. and said the line was even longer than on Monday.

“The line is longer than yesterday,” said Ismail Gangue, a 20-year-old migrant from Mauritania. “I need to do my asylum here because in my country, I'm not free.”

Mamelak, the City Hall spokesperson, said less than a quarter of migrants who have received 30-day notices opt to stay in the city’s care. An average of 2,600 migrants exited city shelters each week last month, according to official data.

The city is also boosting efforts to help migrants apply for work permits and legal immigration status.

Mayor Adams recently announced two additional satellite sites had opened in Harlem and Lower Manhattan, joining the Asylum Application Help Center in Midtown that helps new arrivals file asylum applications, work permits and Temporary Protected Status applications.

Officials say the state-funded center has shepherded more than 13,000 applications for asylum, work permits, and TPS, a federal designation that allows people from certain countries to live and work in the U.S. legally for a certain period of time — usually up to two years.

By the end of the year, the city plans to schedule appointments for all Venezuelans eligible for the new TPS protections that were extended by President Biden in September, according to officials.