The city of New York announced this Monday that it is going to open two new emergency centers to receive asylum seekers who have arrived in the city -mostly Venezuelans- and that they will compensate for the already planned closure of a temporary shelter that had been installed in a cruise terminal.
These two new centers located in the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn will have a capacity for around 1,200 people in total and will welcome men who arrive in New York without family members, the same group that currently occupies the facility that will close at the end of the month.
That center, whose conditions have been highly criticized by some asylum seekers, will be closed so that it can resume its normal use before the cruise season begins in New York.
According to the City Council, more than 51,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the city since last spring and some 31,000 are currently under municipal care.
"We continue to do more than any other city in the country, but as the number of asylum seekers continues to grow, we are in dire need of support from the state and federal governments."Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement today.
Democrat Adams has often warned of the economic burden that the massive arrival of immigrants is placing on the city’s coffers and has been calling for more help for months.
A good number of the people who arrived in the city from the Mexican border have done so on buses sent by the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to spread the immigration burden and protest against the supposedly lax policies of President Joe Biden.
This massive arrival of asylum seekers has overwhelmed the city’s public shelters, which has also begun to pay for the travel of those who voluntarily want to go to other parts of the United States or even go as far as the border with Canada, from where they cross on foot and they ask for asylum