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Since the Republican governor of the State of Texas has decided to send thousands of migrants to Democratic states to protest Biden’s immigration policy, requests for help have multiplied in New York. The city’s shelters have received an additional 17,000 people since April, prompting authorities to open a special center on Randalls Island, which our correspondent visited.
A report by Silvina Sterin Pensel
On Randalls Island, a desolate area north of Manhattan surrounded by the East River, is a white structure that looks like a military base. It has bars around the perimeter and is heavily guarded by personnel in tactical vests, but it is not a property of the armed forces, this is the Center for Humanitarian Response and Relief for Immigrants, a mega complex that has just been inaugurated by Eric Adams , the Head of Government of New York to house those who arrive in the big apple from Texas.
With capacity for 500 people, portable showers and toilets and isolation spaces in case there are COVID infections, this migrant center that only admits adult men has caused a storm of criticism not only because the three giant tents have luxuries such as soft sofas to sit down to watch TV and play Xbox or Scrabble but because the tents are half empty with much more hired staff than immigrants.
A woman who preferred not to give her name is part of that large staff of employees. “I work from 6 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon. I work for a private company that has a contract with the city,” he tells RFI.
He does not speak Spanish at all, but his task is to receive the immigrants -mostly Venezuelans- as soon as they enter the tent.
With the city’s shelters – initially for the homeless – overcrowded, the authorities have set up a quarantine of hotels. Last week he began to fill this gigantic tent with a capacity for 500 men alone, erected on Randalls Island, in the middle of the East River, between Queens and Manhattan, and is considering accommodating new arrivals on a cruise ship.
At the main entrance of the Randalls migrant center, cordoned off by orange cones and with multiple security signs, Dixie, an immigrant from Caracas tries to enter the tent with her two children and seeks help finding work. “We saw it on television and decided to come to ask for information to obtain identity documents, so that we could organize ourselves and be able to work in some labor field. I like the field of construction, I am a technician in panels, in thermosolar panels”, she comments to RFI.
They were located a couple of weeks ago in a hotel in Manhattan after arriving in New York on a flight financed by the Texas government. The governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, has sent thousands of asylum seekers to the Democratic states of the Northeast in protest against the immigration policy of President Joe Biden.
The Venezuelan Dixie clarifies that she came from Texas to New York voluntarily: “They asked us if we wanted and it was voluntary because we accepted.”
The rapid response of the authorities to the arrival of the migrants contrasts with a severe homeless crisis in New York that continues to worsen and without solutions from the government.
James Winans, who heads The Bowery Mission, a shelter that has housed homeless people in the city for 150 years, denounces a lack of equity in care.
“There are tens of thousands of people in this city who survive in shelters, who have no housing, that is a humanitarian crisis,” Winans denounces.
“We are seeing more overdose cases, we are seeing more severe mental health crises. My concern right now is the lack of equity in terms of resources. From what we see there are a lot of resources dedicated to new immigrants, which of course is a good thing, but I wonder, are they going to make the same effort for those who have been wandering in the shelter system for a long time? Winans asks.
The construction of the tents also created friction with the city legislature, which never agreed with the initiative.
