CV NEWS FEED // Reports indicate that New York City has converted over 100 hotels into “emergency shelters” for illegal immigrants after the surging arrivals overwhelmed the city’s homeless shelters.
The New York Post indicated that “the number of homeless people in New York City’s shelter system skyrocketed 53% over the past year,” according to January numbers from the office of Mayor Eric Adams.
The office’s report indicated that “asylum seekers” comprised “over half of all [shelter] entrants during the period.”
It continued: “The flow of asylum seekers to New York City drove a 147 percent increase in entries to shelter for families with children and a 185 percent increase in entries to shelter for adult families.”
Per the Post, “The city has opened more than 210 emergency shelter sites to house more than 170,700 migrants during the border crisis now entering its third year, according to officials.”
In addition, the Post reported that “[m]ore than 100 hotels have been converted into emergency shelters, at an estimated cost topping $1 billion.”
A January Post article noted that the Adams administration “inked a new emergency $76.69 million contract with the Hotel Association of New York City to provide ‘last resort’ shelter to migrant families.”
>> DEM NYC MAYOR CITES MIGRANT CRIME IN CALL FOR CHANGES TO ‘SANCTUARY CITY’ STATUS <<
“Fifteen hotels in Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx will make blocks of rooms available to asylum-seeking families for up to 28 days under the ‘vouchering program’ running through July,” the article explained. The surge of migrants has served as a “boon” to the city’s “hotel industry still emerging from loss of business during the coronavirus pandemic.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA, reacted to the reports of New York hotels increasingly being used to house migrants.
“If you want to know where Democrats’ soft border policies are taking America, just look at NY,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday.
That day, CatholicVote reported that Adams “voiced support for making changes to the Big Apple’s ‘sanctuary city’ status amid a surge of crime perpetrated by illegal migrants.”
“We should not be allowing people who are repeatedly committing crimes to remain here,” Adams said earlier this week. “If you commit a felony, a violent act, we should be able to turn you over to [U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)] and have you deported.”
This was not the first time in recent months Adams seemed to favor modifying his city’s lenient immigration policies.
Back in October, the Democrat had asked a judge to suspend New York City’s legal “Right to Shelter.” In doing so, he argued that the “right” was “outmoded and cumbersome in the face of the present migrant crisis.”
As CatholicVote indicated at the time:
Although often described as a “law,” the “Right to Shelter” mandate in New York City was never passed by the state legislature or city council, nor was it signed by a governor or mayor.
Instead, it was instituted by the State Supreme Court in 1981 as part of a settlement of the case Callahan v. Carey. The lead plaintiff in the class action suit was not an immigrant but an American homeless man.
Critics have charged that Adams is now “backtracking” on the anti-border-security policies he once fervently supported.
Again from CatholicVote’s Wednesday report:
While campaigning for mayor in 2021, Adams said he would “protect” the city’s “sanctuary” status if voters elected him. “Yes, New York City will remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration,” he wrote in an X (then known as Twitter) post at the time.
