New York, a city built by immigrants, claims it has no more room for migrants as hundreds of asylum-seekers toil on the streets.
Knees to their chests, dozens of men from countries like Mali, Senegal and Venezuela sat on a dirty New York City sidewalk outside a Manhattan hotel Tuesday, awaiting asylum processing.
Some had been there for days, in a line that wrapped around the block and that underlined the challenge facing thousands of migrants in New York.
During a press conference earlier Monday, Mayor Eric Adams said the city's resources were stretched.
"There is no more room," Adams reiterated. And it's "not going to get better," he added.
The mayor's office announced that since 2022 the city has opened over 190 emergency shelters, with 12 large-scale relief centers. Two more are planned to be set up in the coming weeks.
At the Roosevelt Hotel, which replaced the Port Authority Bus Terminal as the processing hub for migrants new to the city, asylum-seekers are supposed to be given food, water, and for the single men, transportation to the shelter.
Only families are sheltered at the hotel. Hamid, a 20-year-old Mauritanian who gave only one name, had slept on the sidewalk for the past few days and was exhausted, hungry and thirsty.
Hamid came to the United States "to work and for a home," he said, adding that he can't go back because "we are threatened with death." A recent U.S. State Department travel advisory for Mauritania warned of violent crime in the North African country and said its police lack resources.
New York state is bound by a decades-old consent decree from a class-action lawsuit to provide shelter for those without homes. As more migrants have arrived, a range of approaches to housing them, from tents to relocation to other parts of the state, has been tried.
Murad Awadeh, executive director of the New York Immigrant Coalition, said that this week was the anniversary of asylum-seekers being bused to New York City from Texas. He added that the city should have better planning and shouldn't be operating from an emergency response.
"We need to actually invest in making sure that the infrastructure we have in place can support people," he said. "The city needs to work to get vouchers in hand of people who've been there the longest and get them out of the shelter system and give them the support of starting their lives in their new homes."
Dino Redzic, the owner of Uncle Paul's Pizza and Cafe next door to the Roosevelt, gives pizza daily to the men outside. Adams' policies aren't doing enough, he said.
"Thirty-one years ago, I was in their shoes," said Redzic, a Yugoslav refugee.
"To help makes me feel good, but to watch this here, I just don't understand why this was so organized in the beginning but is now a broken system."
Almost 106,000 people, including some 54,000 migrants, currently live in New York City's care, either in shelters or hotels, according to officials.
Overwhelmed
Since April last year, more than 93,000 migrants, mostly from Central and South America, have arrived in New York, which is required by law to offer free housing to anyone who requests it.
The influx has come as Republican-led states such as Texas have transported migrants to Democratic-run areas to protest President Joe Biden's immigration policies.
Last month, Adams announced that authorities would hand out flyers at the U.S.-Mexican border saying there was "no guarantee" they would receive shelter in New York and that they should "please consider" another city.
His comments sparked accusations that he was violating the city's right-to-shelter laws and betraying the spirit of New York, as symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, which in years gone by welcomed new arrivals by sea.
Adams, however, has met with federal authorities to try to find a solution, which, according to him, includes more border controls, a state of emergency and federal aid to deal with the immigration wave.
He also wants federal authorities to speed up the approval of work permits for new arrivals.
"There's nothing more anti-American than you can't work," Adams added.
His administration now gives priority to families with young children when granting free housing, while single men will have to reapply for shelter after 60 days.
"Our compassion is infinite. Our space is not," a senior official at the agency that operates much of the emergency housing for migrants said recently.
Adams has blamed the federal and state governments for not providing enough assistance.
But city comptroller, Brad Lander, has accused him of undermining "the defining role of New York as a beacon of promise, inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty."