Some migrants in NYC being shuffled upstate after being told there's no room here

Men waiting outside the city’s central intake center for migrants in Midtown on Wednesday said they had slept outside overnight, and some for longer, waiting for placement in the city’s crowded shelter system.

In recent weeks, some fortunate enough to get inside the arrival center in the Roosevelt Hotel at 45 E. 45th St. have only been offered accommodations upstate, including as far away as Buffalo, according to immigrant advocates.

Miguel Alejandro Rojas Quero, 26, from Venezuela, was in a line of over 30 people that at midday snaked around the block outside the hotel. Quero said the process for accessing shelter was inhumane, but added he had suffered worse on his journey to the U.S. He was among 10 or so men who said they had been waiting overnight.

“They tell us they are going to take us out of the city, that if we get shelter, they’ll give it to us out of New York City,” Quero said of the staff outside the hotel. “And that at this moment, there aren’t rooms, there isn’t space.”

They tell us they are going to take us out of the city, that if we get shelter, they’ll give it to us out of New York City.

Miguel Alejandro Rojas Quero, migrant newcomer to NYC

Such was the scene outside the arrival center as the city's shelter system strains to accommodate newcomers, mostly asylum-seekers arriving from southern border states.

Mayor Eric Adams has said that the city has run out of shelter space and announced that single-adult migrants were being notified they would be limited to 60-day stays, with an opportunity to reapply.

Spokespeople for City Hall did not immediately respond to requests for comment about what the men outside the Roosevelt Hotel were told. After this story was first published, spokesperson Kate Smart issued a statement.

"As we've said for a while now, our teams run out of space every single day and we do our best to offer placements wherever we have space available," Smart said in an email. "Adults who arrived Tuesday were all at least offered temporary cots on Tuesday. However, we do have placements available out of New York City and had to come up with our own decompression as we have yet to see one from our federal or state partners.”

City officials have emphasized the difficulty in accommodating the over 56,200 migrants currently staying in city shelters. On Wednesday, Adams announced the opening of another emergency shelter in a former state psychiatric center in Queens — the latest addition to the over 200 sites officials have scrambled to set up so far.

“Every day is a full-on sprint as we look to place hundreds of people and find places for them, every single day,” Zach Iscol, the city's emergency management commissioner, said at a briefing with reporters.

“We’re using all available resources,” he added. “And we continue to call on the national government for support.”

Housing and immigration advocates who work directly with migrants and regularly communicate with the city told Gothamist that migrant families seeking shelter are regularly being told the city has run out of space and the only available rooms are in shelters upstate.

Power Malu with the community group Artists Athletes Activists, which assists migrants in finding accommodations, said he has spoken with many migrants who said they were initially offered a single shelter choice – accommodations upstate, including in Buffalo, located nearly seven hours from New York City. Some declined the offer, but were eventually offered shelter in New York City, Malu said.

Josh Goldfein, a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society's Homeless Rights Project, said that at various times in the last week, migrants haven’t even been able to enter the hotel site to meet with city staff to arrange shelter.

The availability of shelter space in city limits has varied “day by day,” and even “hour by hour” throughout the day, Goldfein said.

The city has contracted out shelters upstate in Buffalo, Newburgh and Albany, as well as other cities.

Goldfein said only offering shelter space outside of city limits doesn’t violate a decades-old court order requiring the city to provide shelter to those in need.

“There’s nothing that says that it has to be within the city,” he said.

Goldfein added: “They’re right now trying to make sure that families with children get placements that are compliant with the law.”

While some adult migrants are sleeping in rooms with dozens of cots, the court mandate prohibits families with minors from being housed in congregate settings.

Adam announced the city will open a new relief center for asylum-seekers on the campus of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens.

The temporary accommodations, which are earmarked for a parking lot, will host up to 1,000 men.

There was no immediate word on when the Queens site will open.

Staff reporters Neil Mehta and Elizabeth Kim contributed reporting. This article has been updated to include comment from a City Hall spokesperson.