Amid Autumn Upheaval, New York City Migrants Wonder Where They’ll Go Next

Throughout this scramble, the city has shuffled migrants from shelter to shelter — often abruptly and through the driving rain. New York Focus spoke with four migrants at the Stockton Street Respite Center, across the street from Bushwick City Farm, about 86 of whom were uprooted and transferred to Randall’s Island, near the Bronx, with less than a day’s notice.

Ahmed, a 27-year-old from the West African nation of Mauritania, said that after two months of wading through bureaucracy, he’d found a sense of relative stability at the Stockton center. But at 11 PM on September 8, he saw a flier with a clip-art picture of a bus on his cousin’s bed. “TRANSFERRING TO RANDALL’S ISLAND TOMORROW MORNING, SEPT 9 @ 8:30AM,” it read. They had nine hours to pack their things and move to the new tent shelters, where they would be housed alongside hundreds of others in the largest migrant relief center in the city.

In the month since, Randall’s Island has become fully operational. But it offers little in the way of security for the people who live there, especially as hurricane season deepens, with winter soon to follow. As the city flooded on Friday, migrant men covered their belongings in plastic tarps as water rained up from the tent roof and seeped up from the floor. A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams called the water damage “minimal.”

Ahmed, whose first name has been changed to avoid jeopardizing his asylum case, said he couldn’t let his cousin be relocated alone. They fled Mauritania together after Ahmed experienced torture at the hands of the police. They traveled through half a dozen countries, from Mauritania to Turkey, through the Americas, to the border, to New York. Now, they have to figure out how to build a life in the United States — no easy task when the rules governing their lives change at every turn.

“I am always with him, to help him. He doesn’t speak French, or Arabic,” Ahmed said. His cousin speaks only Pulaar, which Ahmed knew would make it impossible to navigate the system by himself. “They gave him the paper, and I went with him to help him. I can’t just leave him alone.”

The two men gathered their belongings, got on the bus, and left.

The Adams administration has claimed that without additional assistance from the state and federal governments, resource constraints require it to impose such limits. Gonzalez and other left-wing legislators have argued the city should free up shelter space by expanding pathways to permanent affordable housing, and that the state should utilize its emergency reserves to provide aid to migrants: There is currently more than $13 billion in the state’s “economic uncertainties fund,” which can be used at any time to deal with unanticipated crises.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Governor Kathy Hochul pointed New York Focus to a recent Q&A, in which Hochul said: “There’s just a lot of unforeseen circumstances. … We have to be ready for all scenarios and that’s our job.”

The same week, Ahmed noticed signs posted at Randall’s Island, titled “Notification so that you make other plans,” in Spanish. “After the date ____, you will not be able to remain at this site.” The “date” and “address” lines were left blank.

“When we tell everyone to leave New York if you can … this is why,” Enobabor said, adding that those who could were leaving for DC, Philadelphia, or even Texas.

“If you are in a respite center, you don’t have protection,” she told the men at Bushwick City Farm. “You all saw your brothers taken to Randall’s Island.”

According to Ahmed, life is easier at Randall’s. The migrants at Stockton lack access to caseworkers, they are offered what one man called “prison food,” and volunteers say they face threats of violence from the contracted guards, though without an official grievance system this is hard to verify. At Randall’s, they have food, views of nature, soccer fields, and people who can help them with paperwork.

The Stockton Respite Center wasn’t ever meant to be a long-term shelter. Located in a half-constructed Blink Fitness gym, it was intended as a stopover between more livable shelter locations. But in this city’s overcrowded shelter system, hundreds of men have spent months there. For Ahmed and his cousin, it was the first chance in a long time to settle somewhere.

“I love you all, because you are my families here,” Ahmed texted a group chat full of migrants and mutual aid workers before he left. “I will never forget everything you have done for all of us.”