New York City will start issuing migrants notices to leave the city within 60 days, authorities said.
The first eviction-like notices will be given to around 100 single adults who have been staying in the city’s shelters the longest.
“The people initially that we’re giving the notices to are the people that have been in our system for the longest,” said Dr. Ted Long, the senior vice president at New York City Health and Hospitals.
“We’re delivering the notices on a rolling basis,” he added.
The city also plans to "intensify" case management services to help migrants connect with friends and family or find other housing options. Adult migrants will also be allowed to reapply for shelter if they cannot find other housing options.
The move comes after City Hall implemented a new 60-day shelter stay limit, which is meant to free up space in the already crowded shelters for migrant families with children.
The notices, which are being issued to make room for new migrants and their families, could be viewed as a departure from the city's position as a "sanctuary city," giving asylum to undocumented migrants from U.S. immigration laws that would otherwise expel them.
The city's sanctuary spirit has its origins in Emma Lazarus’s Petrarchan poem at the Statue of Liberty near Ellis Island, where immigrants were processed at the turn of the 20th century:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The city's Mayor however, says the move is necessary to to continue making too for incoming migrant families.
“We must now take additional steps to create urgently needed space for families with children who continue to arrive seeking asylum and help those with us take the next steps to their journey,” Adams said at a City Hall news conference. “Our goal is no child, no family sleeping on the streets.”
Since April 2022, the Big Apple has received over 90,000 undocumented migrants that have made their way from the U.S.-Mexico border. There are currently more than 56,200 migrants staying at the 192 city-run emergency shelters that were set up to handle the flow of asylum seekers.
Adams has tried a range of other options to ensure that everyone in the city is being taken care of. The city has placed migrants in tents, cruise ship terminals, school gyms, and old jail facilities, and has even considered having city residents house migrants in their homes.
The Adams administration announced on Wednesday that it was considering turning the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens into a shelter in order to accommodate the growing number of migrants.
The Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center will help process approximately 1,000 single adult male migrants.
However, the city has said that it does not have the “resources and capacity to establish and maintain shelter sites, staffing, and security to provide safe and appropriate shelter.”
The city expects the cost of feeding and housing migrants will reach $4 billion by next year.
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