‘We’re Just Tired’: Asylum Seekers at a Brooklyn Shelter Struggle With Hunger

New immigrants say meager meals from a shelter operator and police harassment are leaving them with few ways to feed themselves.

Chris Gelardi · July 31, 2024

Food pantries in Brooklyn can provide groceries, but asylum seekers say they can't use them: The shelters where they stay don't allow bringing outside food onto the premises. | Edwina Hay/Hell Gate

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Mik said he can go two days without eating, no problem. The 35-year-old from Mauritania quipped that Ramadan supplies him with that kind of grit. It’s the same perseverance he had to employ last year, as he made his nearly monthlong migration from his home country’s capital through Istanbul and Bogota, then up into Central and North America. At points along the journey, he said, the only nourishment he could get his hands on was water.

He didn’t expect to have to keep battling hunger when he arrived at his destination.

Mik, whose name has been changed to avoid jeopardizing his asylum case, recounted his story earlier this month from a shaded picnic table at a Brooklyn community garden known as Bushwick City Farm. A handful of other asylum seekers were there, charging their phones, using the garden’s wifi, practicing English, or just resting in the summer heat. Until recently, they also would have been cooking on the sidewalk outside the garden, but a recent run-in with police put a stop to that.

When New York Focus visited Bushwick City Farm last fall, new arrivals — some of the 200,000 international immigrants to have sought refuge in New York City over the past two years — spoke of bureaucratic hurdles that made finding stability nearly impossible. Mayor Eric Adams’s administration had shortened the amount of time that most new adult immigrants could stay in any one city shelter from 60 days to 30. Authorities booted people with no money or connections onto the street, some during a massive rainstorm. Survival became an uphill battle.

Many asylum seekers rest at the Bushwick City Farm, which offers shade and a library, among other amenities. | Chris Gelardi / New York Focus

Nearly 10 months later, as the city’s so-called migrant crisis begins to fade from headlines, little has changed. The city and state have dedicated billions of dollars to asylum seeker processing, shelter, and services, yet tens of thousands continue to struggle to meet their most basic needs, which for some include finding enough calories to sustain themselves.

As of the city’s last available count in June, over 65,000 asylum seekers were living in city-funded homeless shelters, whose providers’ contracts dictate that they provide meals. But residents, including the men at the community garden, said they can’t survive on what shelters feed them.

Residents began documenting the food served at a shelter for new immigrants. The images, shared with New York Focus vía a community organizer, illustrate the problem. One photo, from April, shows a meal consisting of two slices of cucumber with lettuce; a snack-sized bag of popcorn; and a dollop of carrots, peas, and an indiscernible diced white meat or vegetable.

Photos and videos taken in June at the same shelter show a meal of two slices of tomato, what appears to be a cabbage slaw, and a bun. Another had tomato slices, the slaw, and a deli slice of turkey.

New immigrants have passed along photographs of the meals they say were provided at the Jefferson Street shelter. | Courtesy of Bushwick City Farm

The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development oversees the shelter, which is located on Jefferson Street in Bushwick. HPD has outsourced shelter operations to a company known as Garner Environmental Services, which did not respond to a request for comment. According to HPD, Garner recently subcontracted with a new local food vendor, which offers catering-style hot food for residents. A spokesperson for HPD sent a photo of the new setup: catering trays filled with tomato slices, shredded lettuce, and grilled chicken.

“New York City is providing shelter, food, and health care to over 119,000 people in our care, including over 64,500 migrants,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Ensuring they all have access to healthy, culturally-sensitive meals is something we are always focused on, often collecting feedback and changing menus and vendors when necessary.”

The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development says it has revamped the catering setup at the Jefferson Street shelter. | New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development

A more recent resident photo of a Jefferson Street shelter meal shows a small takeout container filled with mashed potatoes and breaded chicken or fish sticks, with a tablespoon of vegetable medley. Some shelter residents found it unappetizing and didn’t eat it, one said in a message shared with New York Focus. Others had “no choice,” they wrote, because it was the only food available.

Asylum seekers often can’t afford to buy food themselves. Federal law dictates that they have to wait six months after submitting their completed asylum applications before obtaining work permits. Paperwork problems can extend the waiting time — an issue exacerbated by the shelter stay limit, which makes it exceedingly difficult to secure a reliable mailing address.

Even after asylum seekers receive their work permits, it’s rare to find employers who will hire them, said another man at the community garden. Many new immigrants can be found sitting outside a nearby Home Depot, waiting for contractors, restaurant owners, or other potential employers who need labor. The man, from Senegal, shared his complaints through a two-step translation — from his native Wolof to French via another asylum seeker, and then to English via a garden organizer — illustrating another of the many factors that can make finding work difficult.

“We’re just tired. Very tired,” he said.

When New York Focus asked others at the garden what they want the officials and the public to know, they unanimously asserted that they want to work. For Mik, life dramatically improved once he was able to find work at a local bar. He now rents an apartment with his brother and another person, and his income means he can afford to buy food.

Outside the shelter, residents navigate the city’s patchwork of soup kitchens and food pantries. Organizers at Bushwick City Farm do what they can to help feed their recently arrived community members. A volunteer group called Food Fight offers prepared meals twice weekly outside the Jefferson Street shelter. And volunteers with a local collective known as Club A — some of whom are formerly unhoused themselves — distribute groceries another two days a week.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, several dozen African refugees, as well as a few longer-term community members, lined up to take some Club A provisions and peruse a rack of donated clothing the group had assembled. They’d have to find somewhere to prepare the groceries: The facilities don’t allow outside food, nor do they let residents cook there.

Until recently, asylum seekers would gather on the sidewalk outside of the community garden to grill the donated groceries, plus other provisions they had bought with money they pooled together. But earlier this month, New York City Police Department officers came and ordered them to stop, they said. The shelter residents have reasons to avoid pressing their luck with the police. Any of a long list of criminal convictions, including certain theft and assault convictions, can render asylum seekers deportable. And during a raid at the Jefferson Street shelter last fall, men complained that cops “roughed” them up, impounded their mopeds, and stole their cash.

The NYPD’s 86-member public relations desk did not respond to New York Focus’s questions.

Mik wishes he hadn’t had to leave Mauritania, where as many as tens of thousands are subject to ethnic slavery, and national police crack down on activism and dissent. When New York Focus spoke to Mik, Mauritania’s US-friendly president had shut off the nation’s mobile internet access to quell protests against his re-election, leaving Mik largely unable to contact loved ones. Nothing is worse than having to leave your country and family, he said.

While government assistance has come with one hurdle after another, Mik said he came to New York because he heard that there were kind volunteers who would help people like him.

“And it’s true,” he said in French, gesturing toward the organizers at the garden.