The Desolate State of The Row: Luxury Hotel Turned Chaotic Immigrant Shelter

The hotel The Rowlocated in the 8th Avenue between 44th and 45th streets in Manhattan, used to be a four-star luxury establishment, offering exclusive services and first-class amenities. However, since New York City used almost all of its 1,300 rooms to house immigrants, the place has become a chaotic and desolate scene.

Carlos Arellanoa former hotel employee, revealed the deplorable conditions in which recently arrived immigrants live. According to Arellano, the rooms are trashed, littered with clothes, and the corridors have become very unsafe.

“This place deserves to be closed,” he said in statements to the chain Fox News.

Arellano, who no longer works for the once luxurious hotel, described the facility as a “free everything” of drugs, sex and violence… And the photographs that they show as evidence support their denunciations: the rooms of the 28 floors occupied by 5,000 immigrants are completely destroyed, full of garbage, with clothes scattered everywhere, bottles and boxes of food on the floor.

Many of the immigrants staying at the hotel also congregate outside on the sidewalk, which is very inconvenient for locals and tourists who often come to the area to see Broadway shows or visit nearby Times Square.

The hotel is no longer open to regular guests and is reserved exclusively for immigrants who have crossed the southern border and are awaiting immigration hearings.

Some of the immigrants have been accused of drinking all day, smoking marijuana, having sex on the stairs and starting fights, according to several hotel employees. “Every day we find about ten kids alone in their hotel rooms, drinking or taking drugs. There are weapons in the room. But we can’t go in. We can’t take anything away from them. Basically, in this hotel everyone has a free hand,” Arellano told Fox News.

in better times, The Row era famoso for a full gym, a communal workspace equipped with $2,000 iMac computers, and a parlor where $20 “hand-tossed” pizzas. The bar menu included cocktails for $19 and glasses of champagne for $22. Room rates varied by size, but the executive suite was $719 per night.

But now New York City is using the hotel exclusively to house immigrants, some of whom are seeking asylum.

Arellano also said that he had witnessed violence in the street and several incidents with the personhe. “There are many people who do not appreciate what they have. And they come here with the mentality of how they live in their country of origin, and they think that here there are no rules or laws to comply with,” he denounced.

The former employee of The Row revealed that there are no consequences for acts of violence or vandalism: “If a man decides to hit his wife, they can throw him out but the only thing they face is being transferred to another hotel, one for men alone”.

“Every day we found in this hotel fake passports, fake Social Security cards and all kinds of fake documents”, declared Arellano, who assured that he felt very afraid. “Workers fear for their lives every day, just like me,” he said.

Another hotel employee, Filipe Rodríguez, has described the situation as “shame” and has shared photos of the chaos, including “good food” rotting in garbage bags because “immigrants don’t want to eat it.”

Alcohol is prohibited in all migrant shelters, but staff say they often find empty beer and liquor bottles in rooms and hallways.

“The way they maintain the rooms is horrible. They don’t clean them, they don’t fold the clothes. They accumulate clothes, they accumulate everything they can accumulate,’ Rodríguez told Fox News.

Rodríguez also pointed out that there has been several incidents of “domestic violence” among immigrants, and that one of them even got into a fight with a hotel security guard. In addition, some young people have been “having sex on the stairs.”

Throughout the city, hotels like the Roosevelt, which catered to tourists a few years ago, are being transformed into emergency shelters after the end of the Title 42, that allowed federal officials to turn away asylum seekers at the border with Mexico.

Many of the hotels are within walking distance of Times Squarethe World Trade Center Memorial and the Empire State Building.

A legal mandate obliges the city to provide shelter to those who need it. Still, New York Mayor Eric Adams says the city is running out of room for immigrants and has appealed to the state and federal governments for financial help.

It’s not new for the city to turn to hotels to accommodate homeless New Yorkers when shelters and other options weren’t available.

During the pandemic, mass shelters made it difficult to adhere to social distancing rules, prompting the city to rent hundreds of hotel rooms as quasi-COVID rooms. As the pandemic subsided, the city became less reliant on hotels.

That changed when thousands of immigrants began arriving by bus last year. And that will continue to happen after the end of Title 42.

He Hotel Watson on West 57th Street, which used to get rave reviews for its rooftop pool and proximity to Central Park, is now used to house immigrant families.

He Hotel Roosevelt it also opened its doors last week as a reception center with information and legal and medical resources, according to authorities. This week it will open 175 rooms for families with children, and then expand the number of rooms to 850. The city said another 150 rooms will be available for other asylum seekers.

New York even announced a plan to send hundreds of immigrants to hotels in suburban Orange and Rockland counties across the Hudson River, angering local officials.

Last week, Adams called for immigrants to be sent to every major US city as he continues to try to resolve the Big Apple’s overwhelming immigration crisis. Furthermore, the mayor admitted that the facilities being used, including the hotels, will cost the city some $4.2 billion in 2023 and 2024 alone.

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