The city conducted a sweep of the dozens of remaining migrants camped outside a Manhattan hotel Wednesday night who have refused to leave the sidewalk since the weekend.
NYPD cops arrived on scene shortly before 8 p.m. and instructed the group of about 25 to 30 people to leave the area outside the Watson Hotel and remove their belongings or face arrest.
Sanitation crews then cleaned the sidewalk, where the asylum seekers had been sleeping on make-shift beds — tossing any remaining items left on the street into garbage trucks.
A spokesperson for City Hall said “almost all” the remaining single men outside the Watson decided to get off the streets to somewhere warm.
“The single men who were staying at the Watson have now all either chosen to transfer to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal — a humanitarian relief center that multiple elected officials today called a ‘warm’ location — or decided to leave our care by connecting with friends, family, or other networks,” Press Secretary to the mayor Fabien Levy said in a statement.
The migrants have been sleeping and living outside the hotel since Sunday when they were asked to move to a new shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook. They said the conditions at the congregate shelter aren’t livable and would rather sleep on the street in the cold.
The city has been shuttling single adult men from the hotel to the cruise terminal in order to transition the Watson to temporary housing for migrant families.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Migrants and activists were attempting to protest the city’s transfers when police officers came in and ordered everyone to leave.
Some of the remaining migrants got on a city bus headed to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal shelter, while others who still refused to go were left wandering nearby — unsure of where they will spend the night.
One migrant in the group who remained steadfast against being shipped to the hangar-like Red Hook shelter said he didn’t know what to do.
“I really don’t know where we’re gonna go now,” Randy Chirinos, 29, told The Post.
Following the raid, about a dozen people were standing around with their belongings in trash bags and suitcases on a nearby corner.
Levy said “most” of the migrants decided to board buses headed towards the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, while six chose to head to other cities.
He added that “the remaining asylum seekers chose to go their own ways as agitators outside the Watson continued to encourage them to endanger their lives in these freezing temperatures and not accept shelter.”
Mayor Eric Adams has slammed activists who have been supporting the camped-out migrants as “agitators” who are encouraging the asylum seekers to sleep out in the cold rather than taking the city’s offer of safe and warm shelter and meals.
No arrests were made, the NYPD said.
A local resident who lives directly across the street from the hotel told The Post said he was surprised the city did something about the migrants camping out on the sidewalk.
The man, who declined to provide his name, said he felt like the city “was turning a blind eye.”
“These people need services, they need help. They don’t need luxury accommodations in Manhattan,” he said. “Are these activists are thinking about the next step? What’s the end game?”
He said the encampment illustrates the larger issue of the migrant crisis the city is facing.
“I don’t think anyone in [city government] has a plan,” he said. “No one in NYC has the political courage to make the hard choices.”
