New York City Mayor Eric Adams has pushed back against critics who say plans to remove hundreds of migrants from the city’s shelter system are “inhumane.”
“People have said it’s inhumane to put people outside in the winter, now they’re saying it’s inhumane to do it in the summer. It’s humane to do it in the spring. It’s humane to do it in the fall,” Adams said in response to the criticism. Report by Fox 5“It’s always been inhumane to not be able to accommodate 198,000 people.”
The mayor’s comments came as the city prepares to evict about 250 adult migrants from shelters this week who have reached their 30- or 60-day shelter stay limit and cannot prove they have extenuating circumstances to find housing.
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams. (Lev Ladin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The move comes as migrants continue to arrive in New York City, with more than 1,300 new immigrants arriving in the city last week, Fox 5 reported.
Adams argued that the city was forced to act to free up shelter space as the influx of refugees continued.
“If we hadn’t done anything, we would have 198,000 people under our protection instead of 65,000,” Adams said.
Asylum seekers line up outside the historic Roosevelt Hotel, which has been converted into a city-run shelter for newly arrived immigrant families in New York City. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
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Alfonso Aguilar, director of Hispanic engagement at the American Principles Project, told Fox News Digital that the conditions facing immigrants in New York City are inhumane, but he stopped short of criticizing the city or Adams.
“This is the result of the Biden Administration’s inhumane policies,” Aguilar said. “Biden is allowing unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants into American cities and communities, knowing that we lack the capacity to welcome them and meet their most basic needs.”
Aguilar argued that rather than treating the thousands of arriving migrants “as human beings,” the administration was treating them like “cattle” to “appease its most extreme supporters.”
“It’s a great irony that during his presidential campaign he promised to build a moral and humane system,” Aguilar said, “but what he actually did was create a massive humanitarian crisis that put the lives and safety of millions of people at risk.”
On January 27, 2024, volunteers hand out food and clothing to a group of single immigrant men, mostly from West Africa, in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village neighborhood of New York City. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
But New York City officials say they are not leaving evicted migrants without resources, and are continuing to help asylum seekers move on to the next step after their shelter reservations expire.
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“We’re providing them with information, connecting them to resources and talking to them about what the next steps are,” Camille Joseph Burlack, chief of staff in the mayor’s office, told Fox 5.
