"Broken System": NYC Says It Has No More Room for Asylum Seekers as Advocates Demand Long-Term Shelter

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has announced a plan to house as many as 2,000 asylum seekers at a tent complex on Randalls Island in the East River. Tens of thousands of asylum seekers have been sent to New York since last year and must wait 150 days to file for a work permit, leaving them no options to make a stable living. As the Adams administration claims the city has surpassed its ability to shelter new arrivals, migrants have been stuck in the city’s shelter system for months or repeatedly been forced to sleep in the streets, including last week when dozens waited outside Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotel for days, sleeping shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk, in hopes for a bed and shelter. We speak with Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition and NYIC Action, who calls for an investment in public resources and to support people as they move out of the shelter system into permanent housing. “We want to flip this on its head and actually support people to get out as quickly as possible.”