Mayor Eric Adams is opening another two big emergency migrant shelters as the southern border crisis continues to push New York City to its limits — and President Biden has still not jumped in to help.
One is set to open in Times Square’s vacant Candler Tower office building, which was once home to a 24-hour McDonald’s restaurant long billed as the busiest and most profitable of its kind in the US.
But the landmark fast-food joint was shuttered during the city’s COVID-19 lockdown in June 2020 and the building’s owner, UK-based investment company EPIC, reportedly signed over the deed in March 2022 to avoid foreclosure.
The other shelter will be located in a six-story commercial building at 455 Jefferson St, Brooklyn.
All but one of the 103 emergency shelters now being used to house migrants are located in hotels across the five boroughs.
Syed Hossain, an Indian immigrant who works at a newsstand on 42nd Street near the Candler Tower, said having migrants move in there would likely boost business but might also bring trouble to the tourist mecca at the Crossroads of the World.
“If there are protests or crime, people visiting from other countries won’t keep coming back to New York,” said Hossain, 49, of Queens. “If the immigrants behave and are nice it will not be a problem…If they are given jobs it will not be a problem. When they’re given everything and have nothing to do, that’s when you get problems.”
City Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) expressed outrage over Mayor Eric Adams’ latest solution to the migrant crisis.
“We’re now going to house them in retail spaces, commercial spaces,” he fumed. “Where does it end and when does the taxpayer get a break here?”
Holden added: “This is a problem that the Biden administration created and the government should foot the bill and have a plan to feed and house them.”
Details of the latest shelter plan are contained in an email that City Hall sent to members of the City Council on Monday afternoon and obtained by The Post.
“Please be advised that the City is planning to open two congregate Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center (HERRC) sites at the end of March 2023 to early April 2023,” the message said.
The email was sent just hours after The Post exclusively revealed that the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office is “fully booked through October 2032” to process migrants seeking asylum in the US.
The nearly 10-year backlog is the longest of any ICE office in the US and raises the specter that migrants without valid asylum claims could choose New York City to avoid facing an immigration judge for as long as possible.
The opening of the new shelters is tied to the upcoming closure of a 1,000-bed HERRC at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook ahead of the cruise season.
The migrants living there were to be informed on Monday, according to the email.
The new sites — which will increase the total number of HERRCs to eight — will accommodate as many as 1,200 single men in “congregate” settings and open at the end of March, according to the email.
The city has estimated it will spend $4.2 billion on the migrant crisis by the middle of next year.
In a statement, Adams said that more than 51,000 migrants had arrived since the spring and that than 31,000-plus were being cared for by the city.
“We continue to do more than any other city in the nation, but as the number of asylum seekers continues to grow, we are in serious need of support from both our state and federal governments,” Adams said.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/13/nys-new-times-square-migrant-shelter-was-home-to-busiest-us-mcdonalds/
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