Adams Administration Shelter Policy Disproportionately Evicts African Migrants

The disparity appears partly to be a product of the policy’s design. At first, the city only served notices to single adults, who make up 90 percent of the Senegalese and Mauritanian shelter populations. Because of the increased distance and cost of the journey, migrants from Africa are more likely to travel alone than those from South and Central America, resulting in unequal outcomes.

“The African population has always been a concern of ours,” Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, told New York Focus. He said his group worried “that they would be left out in the wind in this moment.”

Now, some state legislators are seeking to reverse the Adams administration policy. On Monday, state Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblymember Catalina Cruz introduced legislation to make the 30- and 60-day shelter limits illegal.

“The 30- and 60-day notice requirements are arbitrary and inhumane. There is very little confidence from my community that this process is being managed in a way that is fair,” Hoylman-Sigal told New York Focus. “This information confirms that suspicion.”

Reached for comment, the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs referred New York Focus to the administration’s press office, which did not respond to multiple inquiries.

Some of the African migrants who spoke to New York Focus said that they had received 60-day assignments to new shelters, but less than 60 days in, they received another notice saying their time was up. Others said they were notified that their 60-day stays should have been just 30 in the first place.

When staff in a Brooklyn shelter told Khassa his 60 days were up, he pushed back, he said, because he had been there for only a month. He recalled that the staff told him: “It’s been two months. I’m not early.”

Because of language barriers, they have a harder time communicating with caseworkers. Senegalese and Mauritanian migrants primarily speak Wolof, Pulaar, and Arabic — less commonly known among shelter workers than English or Spanish.

“Language access is truly the center” of the problem, said Diane Enobabor, founder of the Black and Arab Migrant Solidarity Alliance, leading “to people not being aware of the time they have in the shelter system.” Enobabor, a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center studying African migration, gathered data from migrants who visited BAMSA and other organizations like Afrikana in Harlem. She found that 72 percent of those who visited the sites for help were Mauritanians and Senegalese who spoke different dialects of Arabic, Pulaar, and Wolof.

In an October 2023 meeting with the mayor’s office, Enobabor’s group and other organizations assisting African migrants stressed the need for better services for the populations they represent. The administration acknowledged the issues but failed to take action, Enobabor said.

Some migrants from African countries — like Cameroon, Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan — qualify for Temporary Protected Status, a federal designation granting eligibility for work permits to migrants from countries deemed sufficiently dangerous by the Department of Homeland Security. City initiatives like the Asylum Application Help Center and the Asylum Seeker Legal Assistance Network, which help migrants complete their asylum applications, have prioritized TPS designees. Mauritanian and Senegalese migrants don’t make the list.

Organizations serving African migrants have had to expand their services to fill the case management gap. According to Adama Bah, founder of Afrikana, the 30-day limit policy has left hundreds of African migrants sleeping on the streets. She described the scene at one current intake center, in the old St. Brigid school building in Manhattan.

“After the night time, when St. Brigid closes, these men are on their own; they’re on the streets,” Bah said. She said that Afrikana, which helps migrants with logistical needs like asylum paperwork, has been staying open late to provide migrants with a warm space at night, but many end up sleeping in trains and houses of worship.

When Sall, a 36-year-old from Mauritania, was kicked out of his shelter after 60 days, he found himself sleeping outside. Other migrants, he said, would collect bottles for the five-cent deposit at night “so that in the morning they can find something to eat.” Soon, he joined them.

Sall, whose full name is withheld to avoid affecting his immigration case, eventually heard of a church offering migrants a place to stay overnight. They would be given an orange, a protein bar, and a water bottle. They just had to be out by 6 am.