New York City Mayor Eric Adams says his administration will soon open a sixth Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center to temporarily serve the continued influx of Caribbean and other asylum seekers arriving in New York.
More than 44,000 people have sought asylum and Adams said this humanitarian relief center will provide 492 rooms to assist adult families and single adult women, and provide them with a range of services, in addition to ensuring they can reach their final desired destination, if not New York City.
“With more than 44,000 asylum seekers arriving in the last ten months alone, we have helped provide shelter and support to nearly as many asylum seekers as the number of New Yorkers we already had in our shelter system when we first came into office.
“We continue to meet all our moral obligations, serving those arriving with dignity and care, but we remain in serious need of additional support from our federal partners, including a real decompression strategy to slow this influx.
“This sixth Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center will provide hundreds of asylum seekers with a place to stay, access support, and get to their final destination,” he added.
Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom, said “we will continue to do what is required to address this ongoing humanitarian crisis,” adding “our teams will continue to work to serve every child, family, and individual coming to New York City to seek asylum.”
Since the humanitarian crisis began, Eric Adams said the city has taken “fast and urgent action”, managing the arrival of a rapidly increasing number of buses across New York City, “with virtually no coordination from states sending them” — opening 83 hotels as emergency shelters and five other humanitarian relief centers already.
Last week, an immigration advocacy group in New York City expressed profound disappointment with United States President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, saying he did not go far enough to address issues surrounding Caribbean and other immigrants, migrants and asylum seekers.
Jose Lopez, co-executive director of the Brooklyn-based Make the Road New York (MRNY), which boasts over 25,000 members in the New York metropolitan area, told the Caribbean Media Corporation his group was “extremely disappointed” by the US President’s remarks on immigration.
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