How We Documented Life Inside New York’s Migrant Shelters | A Times reporter and photographer spent months with new arrivals as they navigated the city’s pop-up shelter system.

The New York Times ^ | Dec. 23, 2024 Updated Dec. 24, 2024, 1:42 p.m. ET | Luis Ferré-Sadurní

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I was overwhelmed by the whirlwind of activity inside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

The bellhops had been replaced by National Guard soldiers in military fatigues. Instead of a concierge, there were workers conducting health screenings. The splendid chandelier was still there, but gone were the tourists.

They had been supplanted by migrants from Venezuela and Guinea and Haiti, most of whom had recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. It was last February, and I had been writing for months about the steep influx of asylum seekers in New York City, and the city’s struggle to house them. But this was my first time inside the Roosevelt, the unlikely welcoming center for migrants seeking free shelter in the city.

The century-old lobby had become the epicenter of the emergency. And this was Day 1 of what would become an eight-month project to document life inside the country’s largest shelter system for migrants.

Migrant shelters have become common across the city. They are hotels in Times Square. Converted office buildings in Queens. Even tents on a Brooklyn airfield. “Migrant shelter” was not even a common term in New York two years ago. Yet the facilities quickly became lightning rods in a debate over how openly the city, and the nation, should welcome immigrants.

But most of us — reporters, New Yorkers, Times readers — had never gotten a good look inside. To scrutinize the oft-criticized living conditions. To see how migrants were settling into a new city. To document a defining and fleeting moment in the city’s history.

That changed when the photographer Todd Heisler and I gained long-term access to the shelter system this year.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I wonder how many "asylum seekers" Señor Ferré-Sadurní has invited into his home?

[Da Coyote]

Keep trying, NYT. No one cares.

[Magic Fingers]

“...a debate over how openly the city, and the nation, should welcome immigrants.”

“Immigrants?” You mean illegal invaders? How about welcoming them with handcuffs and a quick ride back across the border? Those that are able to get over the wall, that is.

[LittleBillyInfidel]

The splendid chandelier was still there, but gone were the tourists.They had been supplanted by migrants from Venezuela and Guinea and Haiti,

Gone were the producers and economic boosters, supplanted with the consumers and treasury resource drainers.

[jerod]

>...supplanted by migrants ???

First mistake by these non-journalist journalist from the NY Slimes... These people are not 'migrants'... They are illegal aliens who illegally entered the United States... They don't belong in a hotel, they belong on a boat or airplane returning them to the country they came from.

[rlmorel]

It burns my ass that a single National Guard soldier has to be used in any way in this fashion. If anything, they should be paid to round them up and put them on buses to the border.

[Karliner]

Martha’s Vineyard should be the model for Operation Wetback 2.0

[sphinx]

Popup shelters? Does a city truck trundle through town dropping pallets of refrigerator boxes in every open space? At $10,000 a box, the NYC lefties would defend this as a great savings over other shelter options. And with a 72 hour average life expectancy, the rollover business will be huge. Figure 300,000 boxes @ $10,000 a box times 120 replacements a year, and politically connected vendors will make out like bandits. Which is how NYC social services operate.

But with Biden gone, maybe the feds won’t pay for it any longer. That could put a hurt on the NY dems.

[cgbg]

“Immigrants” = Illegal aliens.

The slimes keeps trying to put earrings on the open border pig.

[No name given]

Probably zero.

[MV=PY]

When the Washington money spout ends, NY will have some serious problems.

[FrankRizzo890]

“Look at how bad it is for these poor people! They’re just trying to feed their families!” inbound.

[Organic Panic]

Venezuela and Guinea and Haiti

Whoever becomes AG needs to find the agencies who paid for their travel to willingly break US immigration law. And once prosecuted severely punished.

And what a coincidence the shelters of NYC don’t allow any reporters inside BUT the NYT got permission. How very Walter Durante of them.

[Nevernikki]

Did this reporter ever write on how our veterans came back from war and were not coddled like illegal aliens and given no help ?

[GOPJ]

First mistake by these non-journalist journalist from the NY Slimes... These people are not 'migrants'... They are illegal aliens who illegally entered the United States... They don't belong in a hotel, they belong on a boat or airplane returning them to the country they came from.

The New York Times hates American middle and working class citizens. Calling illegals 'migrants' is just another way for them to give the finger to American workers.