NYC Pleads With Private Property Owners To House Migrants As Title 42 Ends, Email Shows

The Daily Caller News Foundation – Arjun Singh on May 11, 2023

A key office under New York City Mayor Eric Adams sent an email to a select group of private property owners pleading for emergency space to house migrants coming to the city as a key Trump-era border policy is set to end, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

“We need your help!” begins the email, sent on May 9 to a private contractor by the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, which states that “New York City is currently experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis” and that it requires spaces that are “available quickly and that could be used by the City temporarily to provide immediate relief to asylum seekers.” The email was sent days before the U.S. government’s Thursday deadline to stop expelling migrants who enter the country illegally under Title 42, which allows foreign nationals to be removed from the U.S. in the event of a “public health emergency.”

It goes on to ask contractors to “[p]lease evaluate your inventory – both spaces you own as well as other ideas you have- and let us know if you have anything available for potential use as soon as possible.”

The email specifies the key criteria for spaces to be offered, stating that they must be “10,000 square feet minimum” and be “contained within a building” as well as have “bathrooms and preferably showers (though we can figure out showers if need be).” It also states that the spaces must be contained within a building and suggests “gyms, recreation centers, dorms, etc” as examples — despite the city having housed migrants in tent shelters previously.

Over 2.7 million migrants have been expelled at the southern border under the policy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows.

Emergency Shelter Request Email by Daily Caller News Foundation 

The cost to taxpayers of housing migrants has been heavily criticized, while officials at facilities suggest that migrants may pose problems to the safety of the property.

“They’re never going to want to leave,” a security official at The Roosevelt Hotel told the New York Post, which reported that the city is considering creating a 1000-room migrant shelter on the property at a cost of $225 million over three years. The city has been spending $8 million a day on housing migrants, who number over 36,500 people, according to the email.

“There’s too much alcohol, too many drugs and too much violence…this is a free for all,” said Felipe Rodriguez, a worker at Row NYC, a hotel in Midtown Manhattan just one block from the famed Times Square, which has been turned into a migrant residence, to Fox & Friends in January.

Many of the migrants arriving at the southern border have traveled to New York City after being released into the U.S. A confidential memo, obtained by CBS News, reveals that the city is projecting over 100,000 migrants by the end of next fiscal year.

Adams’ office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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