After New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the planned opening of a massive 2,000-bed migrant shelter in the South Bronx, Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres he strongly condemned the decision, accusing Adams of treating the municipality as a “dumping ground” for immigrants.
The mayor’s office announced the new shelter last week, while also claiming it was underway migrant crisis in New York is waning.
This comes as New York will close its sprawling tent shelter on Randalls Island and dozens of other shelters in the next few months. New York is a sanctuary city for migrants and has a “right to sanctuary” law that requires the city to take in anyone who seeks asylum and has no other option. However, in recent months, Adams has taken a different tone toward the city’s immigrants and announced the closure of a number of migrant shelters. In a statement last week, Adams said the closings were part of the city’s effort to find “more opportunities to save taxpayer money and turn the page on this unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”
“Thanks to the administration’s successful asylum seeker management strategies and the city’s championed federal border policy changes, which continued to reduce the number of people in the city’s care for 27 consecutive weeks and cut costs by nearly $2.8 billion over three fiscal years, ” they said from the mayor’s office.
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NYC Mayor Eric Adams sits down for an interview with Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum. (Fox News/The Story)
Meanwhile, New York Post reported that it will cost the city between $250,000 and $340,000 to renovate and prepare a 275,000-square-foot former office building in the Bronx to house the expected thousands of men who will live in the new migrant shelter.
Shelter Location – 825 E. 141st St. – was renovated in 2017 and is located near the infamous part of the Bronx called “The Hub”, which is known for a lot of open drug use and activity, including the use of heroin and fentanyl. The building is owned by the SoBro Local Development Corp., a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to improve the quality of life in the South Bronx by strengthening businesses and creating and implementing innovative economic, housing, educational and career development programs for youth and adults.”
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Adams’ announcement was not well received by many Bronx residents. Many of the city’s migrant shelters have earned a reputation as centers of violence, crime and gang activity such as international criminal group Tren de Aragua. The New York Post reported that a 21-year-old Bronx resident named Serene Bilal said, “Wrong move!… You have to work with the people who are already here. We have ongoing problems. Why the Bronx? Why choose the Bronx?
“It will be dangerous,” Bilal told the newspaper. “We don’t know who these people are. We’re not talking about 10 people. We’re talking about thousands. That’s a lot.”
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Congressman Ritchie Torres speaks during a press conference in the Bronx on January 17, 2022. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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Torres, who is he is rumored to be considering a run for governor of New Yorkhe also strongly condemned the decision to locate the new shelter in the Bronx.
“Instead of decisively dismantling the open drug markets in the Hub, the City is treating the South Bronx as a dumping ground for an endless series of shelters,” Torres told Fox News Digital.
“The Bronx is treated differently than the rest of the city,” he continued. “They treat us like a second-class neighborhood in New York.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Adams’ office for comment, but did not hear back.
Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
