Mayor Adams creates 24/7 arrival center to handle migrants as numbers swell
March 7, 2023, 11:32 a.m.
The announcement comes on the heels of scrutiny from city lawmakers over the administration’s spending on the crisis.
New York City will create a new agency that will run a 24/7 arrival center to manage the needs of the growing population of migrants staying in emergency shelters, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Tuesday.
During a news conference at City Hall, Adams unveiled what he said was a new blueprint to handle the ongoing crisis. As part of that plan, the city will open the Office of Asylum Seeker Operations to coordinate the city’s response, with a focus on providing legal and housing services. Migrants will be provided information about the new center once they are bused to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Adams said. The mayor did not identify where the city was looking to locate the 24/7 center.
“We’re going to continue to pivot and shift,” Adams said.
The mayor said the city was now moving from an emergency response to a “steady state of operation.”
Adams, who visited the Texas border city of El Paso in January, has been among the most outspoken Democrats on the issue of immigration. On Tuesday, he once again urged the federal government to begin releasing aid to the city.
“We have been doing it alone thus far,” Adams said. “And that must stop.”
He said the creation of the new office would allow other agencies, which have stepped in to assist the migrants, to refocus their attention on their traditional duties.
The city’s public hospital system has been managing most of the shelter and health needs of the asylum-seekers, a move that critics have said allows the administration to avoid meeting the right-to-shelter regulations under the homeless services department that stipulate the timing and type of shelter individuals must receive.
The plan comes as Adams faces growing scrutiny about how much the city is spending to care for the migrants. According to the city, nearly 50,000 asylum-seekers have sought help from the city since last spring. The city has so far opened 92 emergency shelters and seven emergency response relief centers, according to the mayor’s office.
On Tuesday, Adams said that the city was currently serving over 30,900 migrants.
The city has to date spent more than $650 million, according to a budget official, but the amount is expected to soar to over $4 billion by the end of June 2025.
Last week, a City Council hearing revealed that the city was spending an average of $364 per household for those staying overnight.
Elected officials have increasingly pressed administration officials to explain why the costs are so high and how much federal aid the city expects to receive. Congress recently passed a bill to allocate $800 million in aid for cities taking care of migrants.
“We don’t know how much we’re going to get for sure,” said Jacques Jiha, the city’s budget director, during a hearing on Monday. “But even in the best-case scenario, the city will not get all of the $800 million.”