Not all migrants have the same luck in New York. Men who came to the United States without family were transferred to a former prison. The migrants complain about the overcrowded and hygienic conditions and that they have not been able to obtain legal help. They spoke to Voice of America but asked to remain anonymous.
“It affects many of us because I got sick, I had an infected tooth, just when I arrived for the same reason, as I told you, it’s unhygienic and one lives too unpleasant there.”
“Have you been able to do any process with your papers or are you waiting, how are you?”
“I haven’t been able to do anything because I have to pay a lawyer, if you know then I don’t work, I have no resources to pay a lawyer,” says a Venezuelan migrant.
Their arrival at this former Harlem prison-turned-refuge took them by surprise.
“They put us on a bus when we arrived, it was that they had us here, we lined up, they registered us that they were going to give us a room, when we were surprised that we entered and a room of 9, 10, 11”, narrates a migrant Colombian.
Without legal advice, this Colombian migrant fears being deported.
“We have not put asylum through the question of what they say they are going to deport, that all that is going to end, so the fear is that we do not know whether to pass it or not,” he continues.
This is not the case of Mitzael, a Venezuelan who arrived with his family from Chile and was immediately placed in a private room and had already processed his identification document. In addition, he received medical attention.
How have they helped you?
In everything, in the vaccines, in the house, in the food, everything is fine, thank God,” says Mitzael Pérez, a Venezuelan migrant.
The New York government has already opened 176 emergency shelters in an effort to deal with the never-before-seen influx of migrants pouring into the city.
In the most recent humanitarian center that has just opened in the city, different services are expected to be provided to at least 500 families of migrants who have just arrived. Ángela González, Voice of America, New York.