While Mayor Eric Adams may have declared over a month ago that the tide of asylum seekers flowing into the city since the spring had slowed considerably, his administration announced the opening of eight new so-called Asylum Seeker Resource Navigation sites across the city Wednesday afternoon.
The city chose eight community-based organizations to run the sites and granted them a total of $2.1 million – spread across the groups – to support their operations, according to a release from City Hall.
The centers will be offering legal assistance, medical care, case management and immigrant rights workshops, City Hall said, building upon the work of the first Asylum Seeker Resource Navigation run by Catholic Charities of New York located in the American Red Cross of Greater New York’s Hell’s Kitchen headquarters.
“The city’s first Asylum Seeker Resource Navigation Center has served nearly 7,000 individuals since opening a few short months ago, and I’m proud to expand the footprint of this important work across all five boroughs to support the asylum seekers arriving in our city every day,” Adams said in an emailed statement.
Since Many, over 26,000 mostly South and Central American migrants have arrived in the city, many of them bussed here by southern cities and states as well as the federal government.
“In partnership with these eight community-based organizations, these additional centers will help support the more than 26,000 asylum seekers who have arrived here in New York City with a range of services,” the mayor said. “New York City will continue to do all we can to meet our moral and legal mandates and welcome and support asylum seekers arriving here.”
However, according to the mayor, the number of asylum seekers arriving on buses in the city each day drastically fell after the White House instituted a new border policy last month to start expelling Venezuelans who illegally crossed the southern border.
The announcement comes as Adams has left the city on a four-day trip to Greece to take part in a mayor’s against anti-Semitism summit and Qatar to attend the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
It comes on the heels of Adams’ administration unveiling the opening of a new “Humanitarian Response and Relief Center (HERRC)” in the Stewart Hotel, located in Midtown, Manhattan. That new 600-room shelter will be operated by the NYC Health + Hospitals – the city’s public hospital system – and the city’s Emergency Management office. It’ll replace a 300-room shelter in the same building currently being operated by the city Department of Homeless Services.
During an unrelated press conference Tuesday, Adams told reporters the city is still waiting on federal relief funds, nearly two months after he first asked for financial relief from Washington while declaring a city state of emergency over the crisis.
“We’re waiting for the money to come in,” he said.
