Three immigration help centers in New York City are closing, according to a statement from the mayor’s office on Friday. As New York City faced a significant increase in migrant arrivals, these centers – two in Manhattan and one in the Bronx – were vital in processing migrants as the shelters across the five boroughs were overwhelmed, offering assistance in filing paperwork for asylum and temporary work permits. City officials estimate that roughly 236,000 migrants have arrived into the city since a surge of arrivals in spring of 2022. The three centers are scheduled to close at the end of June.
The mayor’s office blamed the closures on a lack of support from the state government, which had committed more than $4 billion to the city over the years for this purpose, but recently denied a request for another $1 billion plus. Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for the mayor, announced that because Gov. Kathy Hochul denied the request, “we are disappointed to have to make the difficult decision to close a resource center that has allowed us to provide assistance on over 109,000 applications.”
State officials and others have pushed back against these claims from City Hall, noting that the city government had only drawn less than $2 billion of the funds that had been previously allocated. “The number of weekly migrant arrivals has declined by 95 percent, and the city has more than $2 billion from the state that they have yet to draw from, which is why this year’s budget did not include additional funding,” said Hochul’s spokesperson Avi Small, adding that the state will continue to help the city government “address their responsibility” on the matter.
Immigration advocates agree with this assessment. “It is convenient for Adams to blame everyone else for the City’s budget issues, but his own fiscal mismanagement is the real problem,” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, in a statement. “New York City needs its Mayor to stand up for all New Yorkers, and enact the policies that will allow all people to not just survive, but thrive.”
Some 38,000 migrants, mostly families with children, remain in shelters across the city today.
