NEW YORK — Some volunteers on the front lines of New York City’s migrant crisis will not be welcome at a 24/7 arrival center for asylum seekers that Mayor Eric Adams’ administration plans to open, the Daily News has learned.
The volunteers in question — many of whom have been openly critical of aspects of Adams’ handling of the crisis — were told by members of the mayor’s team in a Monday night briefing that they cannot help out at the soon-to-launch arrival center, said Power Malu, the founder of Artists Athletes Activists.
“We asked twice, ‘What about organizations like us?’ But we were told that this is about the mayor coming up with a plan,” said Malu, whose group is among a network of mutual aid organizations that have since last spring assisted migrants at the Port Authority Bus Terminal upon their arrival from border states like Texas.
“Explicitly, they told us, ‘You are not involved in this, we are not putting you on.’”
Also on the briefing was Adama Bah, an activist with TLC NYC, another group that has helped connect migrants with services upon their arrival at Port Authority. She corroborated Malu’s retelling of the briefing.
Spokespeople for the mayor did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday morning.
Later Tuesday, Adams was expected to announce details about the arrival center in a City Hall press conference.
The location of the new center was not immediately known, and neither were details about how it will be staffed. It is expected to serve as a hub where newly-arrived migrants will be able to get help with accessing a range of services, including legal assistance, according to Malu.
Malu’s group does not receive funding from the city, and he said he feels like Adams’ team is refraining from involving him in the arrival center because of his public criticism of the administration’s response to the migrant crisis.
“We are not going to be muzzled or bullied into not saying anything,” he said. “If they don’t welcome us to the table, we’ll create a new table and keep doing our work.”
The opening of the around-the-clock arrival center comes as more than 30,000 mostly Latin American migrants remain in the city’s care.
Amid the massive influx, Adams has in recent weeks clashed with migrant advocates.
Groups like Malu’s have said Adams’ administration isn’t doing enough to help migrants acclimate in the city. They’ve also complained about not receiving funding from the city to support their operations at Port Authority.
Adams, meantime, has said some activists in the mutual aid community are “agitators” and blamed them for instigating a days-long migrant demonstration outside the Watson Hotel in Midtown last month.
The protest featured dozens of migrant men who set up a makeshift camp outside the Watson in protest of the Adams administration’s decision to kick them out of their rooms at the hotel in order to accommodate asylum-seeking families with kids instead.
“I’m not even sure they are migrants,” Adams said Feb. 1 of the Latin American men who camped out in front of the Watson. “There are some agitators that I just really think are doing a disservice to the migrants.”
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