What you should know
- Migrants are sent from Texas to New York City with paperwork that theoretically directs them to shelters, but in many cases the addresses are wrong and they are not shelters at all, but rather non-family offices or facilities.
- Catholic Charities says more than 200 people have had crucial legal documents sent to a corporate office instead of shelters, putting those people at risk of missing hearings and being deported.
- New York City officials say the shelter’s faulty paperwork is news to them and they plan to investigate.
—
NEW YORK — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is apparently sending migrants crossing the border from Texas to New York City, but with paperwork pointing them in the wrong directions, leaving them struggling on the streets of New York. New York without food or shelter.
New York City is one of the few places in the country with right to housing laws, which means that anyone who comes here and shows up at designated city facilities at a certain time of day must be given shelter at The next morning.
Mayor Eric Adams and city leaders say others are taking advantage of that, sending thousands of immigrants to New York and pushing the city’s already struggling shelter system to the brink. (No doubt aid groups say the city isn’t being entirely accurate and that the shelter system is overwhelmed by a variety of factors, including understaffing and a rising eviction rate.)
But what happens when people show up and don’t know where to go?
Documents obtained by our sister network News 4 New York indicate that the Department of Homeland Security (or DHS for its acronym in English) has been serving documents to migrants in Texas saying, in effect, go to New York City and go to this address to receive services.
The problem is that many of those addresses are not family shelters, or shelters at all. In some cases, people have been sent to the corporate offices of service providers, or to facilities that provide some form of shelter but do not accept families or the homeless.
“It’s clear that someone at the border is giving people information that is not accurate about why they should come to New York, where they should go when they get to New York, that’s definitely happening,” said Josh Goldfein, attorney for the staff from the Homeless Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society said Thursday.
A Customs and Border Patrol spokeswoman told News 4 the agency was investigating the matter and was aiming to have more information by Friday.
Gary Jenkins, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Social Services, tells News 4 that while the city is well aware that immigrants come from border states, he had no idea DHS was sending some of those people to New York with wrong addresses of refuge.
“I haven’t seen the form you reference, but we will definitely look into it and follow up to see if we can determine where the notices are coming from so we can correct course,” Jenkins said in an interview Thursday.
Thousands of immigrants arrive in NY seeking asylum, reports Ana Ledo
THREE NIGHTS ON THE STREETS
That detour has left some families wandering the streets, with nowhere to go and nothing to eat. For the Urbaez family from Venezuela, who were rejected in a center on the street West 40th Street which does not accept families, meant three days on the streets, including time sleeping in a car, before they managed to find their way to the city’s shelter intake center.
“We weren’t going to separate. We just went back to the streets and thank God we met this guy who helped us get to the Bronx,” Father Crisman Urbaez said, referring to the city’s 24-hour intake center, known as PATH. , on the street East 151st Street in the Bronx.
For her young daughter, only 6 years old, the ordeal, which would be a nightmare for most people, still outweighs the alternative.
“It’s better not to be on the street,” said Crisangelise Urbaez.
When families arrive at PATH, critics say it takes longer than it should to go through the system to get to a shelter. (The city is legally required to place anyone who arrives before 10 p.m. into a shelter by 4 a.m. the next day, but it recently acknowledged that on at least one night, four families were not located in time. As of Thursday , Commissioner Jenkins maintained no other family had been in a similar situation since).
“The process they have is not appropriate for this population, which doesn’t mean that someone has necessarily done anything wrong, it just means that each case is taking longer to deal with and that’s slowing down work,” said Legal Aid’s Goldfein.
But it’s not just about people being sent to the wrong addresses and rejected. According to Catholic Charities, weeks after these immigrants show up and leave, crucial paperwork has turned up for them at these wrong addresses.
In particular, Catholic Charities has received court-dated documents warning that recipients can be deported immediately if they don’t respond, except that no one knows where the recipients are because they were sent to the wrong place to begin with.
“It is absolutely unacceptable that more than 200 people have had their hearing notices (sent to) a Catholic Charities agency,” said Maryann Tharappel, attorney in charge of immigrant refugee services at Catholic Charities.
Tharappel tells News 4 that Catholic Charities warned the city weeks ago that people were mistakenly arriving at their door, and from there, in many cases, no one knows where they went next.
Jenkins said the city has been working as diligently as possible as they handle the massive influx of immigrants.
Randy Serrano with the report from Washington DC.
MIGRANT ‘WELCOME CENTER’
In an effort to classify the crisis, the city is now talking to prominent local service groups about setting up tables at bus stations and other drop-off locations. The objective is to intercept immigrants when they set foot in the city and make sure that they are really going to the right place.
Ultimately, the goal is to set up a service center or “welcome center” (like those seen on the southern US border), which would be a one-stop shop to help people with things like school enrollment. , housing, access to food and healthcare. The city is looking at potential locations in midtown Manhattan, due to proximity to immigration court, or in the South Bronx, due to proximity to the city’s homeless intake center.
Jenkins, the social services commissioner, could not say when such a service center might open, but said the goal was to keep it “within a short period of time.”
“As a city, under Mayor Adams, we want to make sure families get the services they deserve,” he said.
–
