New York City opens sixth hotel shelter for migrants

More than 44,000 migrants have arrived in New York City, according to municipal figures, and more than 31,000 would be in mobility through the Darien jungle bound for the United States, according to statistics from the National Immigration Service. The Venezuelan Henderson Alfredo has just arrived in the big apple.

“Thank God we are already here because that was a tremendous battle to get here, we crossed the jungle, so many countries to get here to the United States and well, thank God we are here and in the little time to get a job and stabilize ourselves” , Twelve Henderson Alfredo, Venezuelan Migrant.

Local government faces new challenges. This week the Commissioner of Social Services, Gary Jenkins, resigned amid an investigation into cover-ups of alleged violations in homeless shelters. His departure will be official on March 3, and he insists it was planned.

The mayor’s office has turned to contracts with hotels to expand hotel capacity and this week announced that it reached an agreement to add 492 rooms at the Holiday Inn in the financial district. Facing criticism from organizations such as the Legal Aid Society about the conditions of other shelters such as the cruise terminal in Brooklyn, with a capacity for only one thousand men, the mayor and his team spent a night there and shared with the migrants.

Meanwhile, what some migrants are asking is to speed up their work permits to break their dependency on the shelters.

The mayor also doubled the projection of spending for the immigration emergency and said that by June 2024 it will cost taxpayers more than 4 billion dollars. Ángela González, Voice of America, New York.