HELLSCAPE: NYC To House Illegals In Central Park

The crown jewel of NYC soon to be a third world tent city.

And it’s not just Central Park — it’s also Prospect Park, Coney Island, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, JFK hangars, Citi Field, college dorms, etc

Tents, tiny homes in Central Park could house asylum seekers, internal document suggests, according to City Hall sources

By Doug Williams, Alecia Reid, Marcia Kramer, May 5, 2023, CBS New York:

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NEW YORK — Tents and small houses in Central Park may be used to temporarily shelter asylum seekers in New York City, CBS2 has learned.

City Hall sources said the plan, outlined in an internal document, could be implemented if border towns continue sending asylum seekers and hotel space runs out.

As it is, the city’s latest temporary housing solution is unpopular with some in the NYPD. That’s because the police academy in Manhattan is now sheltering migrants, raising security concerns.

Video from Thursday night shows asylum seekers getting off buses on the East Side and entering the latest temporary migrant shelter, the former police academy, where the city says they’re expected to house hundreds for a short period.

Though the NYPD’s active academy is in Queens, the facility is still used by some ranks of the department. For example, an NYPD source told CBS2 screening new recruits now has to be done somewhere else.

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The same source said 95 migrants are currently there and being kept in the academy gym, not separated by sex.

PBA President Patrick Lynch released the following statement:

“Yet another societal problem has landed in New York City police officers’ laps, and the ‘solution’ is terrible for everyone involved. It is a significant security risk to house civilians in an active, working police facility, which means a large contingent of police officers will need to be posted there for both the safety of the migrants and the security of the building. It’s a waste of resources and a frankly inhumane arrangement. This decision need to be rethought.”

The city said the number of asylum seekers that arrived over the last year is approaching 60,000, and the city has spent more than $1 billion on those that have alr

“Despite calling on the federal government for a national decompression strategy since last year, and for a decompression strategy across the state, New York City has been left without the necessary support to manage this crisis,” Adams said. “With a vacuum of leadership, we are now being forced to undertake our own decompression strategy.”

Adams said the mayors and county executives in both areas have been notified. CNN has reached out to local leaders in both Orange Lake and Orangeburg for their response to the mayor’s plan. CNN has also asked New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for her response to the mayor’s plan to transport migrants outside the city.

Rockland County Executive Ed Day expressed outrage over Adams’ plan on Friday.

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“This is absurd and we will not stand for it,” Day said in a statement. “There is nothing humanitarian about a Sanctuary City sending busloads of people to a County that does not have the infrastructure to care for them.”

The Rockland County executive said he was initially provided with “few other details” about the City’s plan for asylum seekers, aside from that they will be housed at a local hotel. He said he later found out that New York City officials “plans to house about 340 adult males” in Orangeburg for four months with plans to secure them work permits to integrate into the community.

“Work permits typically take up to six months on average for asylum seekers to obtain and the County believes it is unlikely this will be achieved in four months,” Day said. “There is nothing coordinated about the situation but rather its duplicitous of Mayor Adams to surprise a locality that busloads of migrants are heading to their town.”

The statement goes on to criticize the chosen destination in Rockland where the migrants will be bused to, saying “it has no resources within walking distance.”
Memo weighs possible ‘solutions’

The announcement comes on the heels of an internal briefing memo obtained and first reported by CNN that shed light on a variety of options city officials were weighing to help weather the expected surge.

Tents in Central Park, a retrofitted airplane hangar at John F. Kennedy Airport and building temporary tiny homes were some of the options noted in the memo, which says the city is anticipating 800 migrants will arrive in the city every day from the southern border after Title 42 is scheduled to lift Thursday. Since last spring, the city has processed tens of thousands of migrants and a total of 37,500 people are currently in the city’s care, the memo says.

The 5-page draft memo, which outlines the city’s needs and possible “solutions,” says New York City is already seeing an increase in arrivals. On Wednesday alone, officials recorded approximately 500 arrivals. Title 42, the pandemic-era rule that allows immigration agents to swiftly return migrants to Mexico, is scheduled to end on May 11.

US Customs and Border Protection officials already have seen an uptick in migrants crossing the US-Mexico border in anticipation of the expiration of Title 42, CNN has reported. There have been around 7,000 daily encounters on the US southern border in recent days, a number expected to rise in the coming weeks.

CNN spoke with three different sources in Adams’ administration who confirmed the authenticity of the planning document. A fourth source at one of the city agencies that would be tasked with helping to set up shelter and other resources for migrants, confirmed the agency had reviewed the memo. The document details a series of potential options the Adams administration is exploring that are not yet finalized, the sources explained to CNN.

The document outlines possible locations for housing migrants at existing buildings including the campuses of York and Medgar Evers colleges; the YMCA at the Park Slope Armory in Brooklyn; and at a massive 135,000 square foot recreation center in Staten Island.

Listed as another possible “solution” is a proposal to retrofit unused airplane hangars at John F. Kennedy International Airport, which would require help from the state and the Port Authority, which operates the airport, to build out “dormitory style residential services.”

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