The city of NY confirmed this Friday that among the places it is evaluating to house immigrants who continue to arrive -more than 100,000 in recent months- is the federal prison of Manhattanclosed since 2021 due to poor conditions that included infestations of rats and insects and water leaks.
“All options are on the table”said the Deputy Mayor for Communications, Fabien Levy, today in a meeting with the press to talk about immigrants in front of the hotel Rooseveltone of many converted to a shelter and where the city established its main processing center for new arrivals.
Levy claimed that “nothing has been finalized yet” with respect to Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) and recalled that it is a federal agency.
Among the notorious prisoners that this prison has housed are the drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmangangster John Gotti and accused child molestation financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein’s 2019 suicide in his cell highlighted a series of negligence, pointed out by the Justice Department, that made it easier for that to happen, as well as the repeated criticism of his lawyers about the conditions in the prison, which ultimately led to his death. closing.
The MCC is listed in a letter that the Legal department of the city sent on August 9 to Governor Kathy Hochul about possible places to house immigrants in a humanitarian and fiscal crisis that, according to Mayor Eric Adams, has been caused by the arrival of so many people, that the city It had no capacity to house.
The city did not indicate in the letter whether it had contacted the Federal Bureau of Prisons regarding the use of the MCC as a shelter for immigrants.
The federal prison agency limited itself to pointing out that the MCC “is closed, at least temporarily”and that long-term plans for the prison “have not been finalized,” according to media outlets.
Adams reported last Wednesday that as of August 13, 101,200 asylum seekers have arrived in the city, of whom 59,000 are under his care, which includes shelter, meals and other social assistance and education for children.
This influx since last year has forced the city to set up 202 emergency centers as shelters, the most recent a four-tent center with a capacity for 1,000 men that opened Monday in the parking lot of a psychiatric hospital in Queens County.
According to Levy, this center will exceed 50% of its capacity today.
The city is close to opening another center on Randall’s Island, in Manhattanfor two thousand men.
NY it receives between 300 and 500 people every day, some directly from the Texas border but also from other states.
At the end of the conference, a furious merchant began to yell that he no longer received customers at his jewelry store, located in the same building as the Roosevelt Hotel, due to immigrants living there temporarily.
“The hotel had five-star clients. This is counterproductive, I’m not getting any more clients. I’m afraid to show my jewelry in the showcase”said the man, who did not want to give his name.
