Migrants kicked out of Midtown hotel have set up tents on sidewalk after refusing to move to shelter

The Big Apple’s migrant woes worsened on Monday, as more than a hundred asylum seekers that had been put up at a Midtown hotel set up an encampment outside rather than move to a impromptu shelter set up by Mayor Eric Adams.

The encampment sprouted up outside The Watson Hotel seemingly overnight, and serves as the latest development in the city’s ongoing struggle to house an abnormal outflow of asylum seekers seen in recent months.

Residents are already complaining about the procession, with one single mom telling DailyMail.com she’s been forced to carry pepper spray just to make it through the rowdy mass to her home across the street.

Already lined with tents, the encampment surfaced sometime early this morning, as male migrants booted from the $450-a-night hotel have taken issue with a shelter offered by Adams last week as an alternative, citing its bare-bones amenities.

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Erika Quintero, who lives across the street from the tent-laden encampment on West 57th street, told DailyMail.com that the migrants have already been ‘disruptive’ in the few hours since they set up camp.

‘Last night there was so much noise,’ said Quintero, who lives alone with her 9-year-old son in the residential building.

Speaking to DailyMail.com just a few feet from the mass of migrants – whom are all men –  she said that she and her son had lived at the residential building for years, during which time she and her family were subjected to the hordes of homeless who had been housed at the hotel during the pandemic, in another effort from Adams.

Revealing that her husband passed away just six months ago, the single mom said that the group of displaced men grew even more disruptive by morning, after local residents gifted them tents and tables full of food as they refused to relocate.

‘Loud music, people screaming,’ she said. My son was trying to take a class on zoom. It’s very frightening.’

The widow went on to reveal that she now felt the need to carry pepper spray, producing a cannister from her purse as proof.

‘Look at me I am carrying pepper spray,’ she said, before questioning the city’s actions and apparent hesitance to break up the procession.

‘Why is the city doing this to us?’ the frustrated mother asked.

It comes as several failed courses of action to house the flow of migrants have failed in recent months, including a scrapped tent city in The Bronx and a proposed facility on Randall’s Island that never materialized.

These ill-fated efforts resulted in many of the migrants being housed at hotels, with hundreds of male asylum seekers residing at the Watson since November.

That changed last week, when Adams, in his latest pivot in addressing the crisis, announced that a then-planned shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal would become the latest temporary home for at least 1,000 male migrants, including all of those staying at the Watson, which for the past few months served as a men’s-only shelter.

Addressing New Yorkers like Quintero fed-up with rampant crime and homelessness, Adams gave a deadline to those staying at the Watson for Monday, saying the men  will now be replaced by asylum-seeking families.

That spurred several migrants to take up outside the building Sunday night to protest the mayor’s declaration – with many outright refusing to relocate, citing privacy concerns and non-optimal conditions at the pop-up facility, with some comparing it to a prison.

By Monday, as several found themselves locked out of their respective rooms at the Watson, the predominantly Latin American procession remained, setting up camp directly outside the luxury building in direct defiance of Adams’ order. 

Photographs taken Monday morning show dozens of tents lining the sidewalk on 57th street directly outside the hotel, while some male asylum seekers were seen keeping warm by wrapping themselves in blankets and sleeping bags.

They were reportedly removed from their rooms one-by-one, with others returning to their rooms Monday telling reporters they were not being allowed back into their rooms to retrieve their belongings.

Speaking to DailyMail.com outside the Watson Monday, one of the migrants, 32-year-old Labrador, lamented his and others’ situation, but remained adamant that he would not relocate to the Brooklyn shelter, comparing it to a jail.

‘They want to take us to a place like a jail,’ said Labrador, who is from Venezuela and served in the country’s Special Forces.

‘They don’t show us the real pictures and video but I have them and will show everybody,’ the migrant said, producing photos that have been circulating on social media showing the interior shelter.

The photos show a mass of roughly 1,000 of cot-style beds, all in close proximity to one another. 

‘The cots are lined up next to each other,’ the asylum seeker pointed out, before complaining that he and others ‘have to cross the street to take a shower.’

He then asked, ‘How can they let us live like this?’ referring to Adams and other city officials. ‘We want answers,’ he said. ‘The city needs to send people to talk to us. We will sleep right here again tonight.’ 

Adams’ office has yet to issue an official statement in regards to the procession, which has yet to be broken up.

As the afternoon edged on, a member of the Mayor’s immigration office was seen at the scene, speaking with many migrants about the arrangements Adams had made for them, as community organizers provided the men with food and coffee. The migrants, for the most part, appeared less than convinced.

Messages scrawled on cardboard littered across the makeshift campsite expressed sentiments similar to that of Labrador’s, voicing a stance virtually identical to the that of the Venezuelan.

‘Nesecitamos vivienda para dormir,’ one of the signages read, which translates to ‘We need a place to sleep.’ 

‘Nesecitamos ayudo por favor,’ another read, which in English simply means: ‘We need help.’

Another sign, also penned in Spanish, demanded an end to discrimination against immigrants.

Other men who found themselves forced out of their temporary living situation on Monday

The outdoor encampment surfaced sometime before 4am, spurring officers from the NYPD to arrive on the scene just a few hours later. As of 4pm, a police patrol car remained at the scene The Watson, seemingly to monitor the situation. 

Earlier in the morning, the displaced asylum seekers protested their prospective transfer to the cruise terminal – which, unlike the Watson, offers migrants only a single, army-style cot as opposed to an actual bed – by painting a massive banner to be hung on the scaffolding outside the Watson Hotel.

‘Hogares permanentes!’ a spray-painted message read, translating to ‘Permanent homes.’

The call for alternative housing was accompanied by another demand, this one written in English, that besieged New York officials to ‘cancel rent.’

The tents, meanwhile, reportedly were gifted to the displaced men by members of the local community, after several were seen in the early morning sleeping on Mylar blankets spread directly on the concrete. 

Within hours, organizers would set up a table complete with coffee, bananas, water, and pizza for the migrants, as members of the press also convened to cover the developing demonstration.  

Refusing to leave Monday morning, several of the asylum seekers said that they are hoping their noncompliance spurs Adams to reconsider his office’s plan to relocate them to the ferry terminal in Red Hook.

Last week, Adams, 62, announced that the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal – which set near the southern end of the East River between Brooklyn and Governors Island – would open and house 1,000 male migrants, in an effort to make room for families that will replace the single men.

The plan called for those who had been shacked up there free of charge for the past three months to be relocated to the bare-bones shelter – in his most recent slip-shot  solution to addressing the city’s ongoing migrant crisis.

Announcing his intentions, Adams said his office planned to replace the displaced single male migrants with the families – many of whom are already being put up at the $700-a night hotel in Hell’s Kitchen. 

While good news to people like Quintero, that plan was not received well by many of the more-than 100 migrants booted from the Watson Monday morning.

As the migrants’ eviction deadline rapidly approached early Monday morning, only a small number were seen getting on buses tasked with bringing as many of the asylum seekers as possible to the Brooklyn shelter.

DailyMail.com cameras captured some of those pressured to get on the buses to their new bare-bones home, with three departing the hotel with only 15 to 20 people. 

The shelter – photos of which have already been circulating on social media – will not be a permanent home, however, as the city has promised to close the facility in time for cruise season in the spring.

That said, the tent procession seen on Monday will likely be even more temporary, with such encampments historically being broken up under Adams’ administration.

Still refusing to move Monday evening, many of the migrants, speaking to DailyMail.com voiced concerns over conditions at the shelter, citing the ‘basic beds’ and cold interior.

‘They treat us like dogs throwing us to the street,’ said one 21-year-old man from Venezuela named Isaac Quintero, who is not related to the aforementioned single mother.

‘I know they have empty rooms available,’ the young man said, adding that he had slept on the street the last two nights after being booted from his room at the luxury hotel. 

Quintero added that he doesn’t want to go to Brooklyn facility because ‘there is no privacy’ and complained that ‘they sleep on cots.’

He added that evicted migrants were told by members of Adams office that they are restricted with the amount of items they can bring due to concerns regarding space.

He added that he had left Venezuela last year, and walked almost the entire way to the US, hopping on different buses to eventually get to New York.

He said the journey took him more than two months.

‘It was such a difficult journey,’ he confided, while remaining defiant in his decision to stay at the campsite until Adams addresses his and others’ plight.

Photos that have since surfaced online seem to corroborate some of the migrants’ accounts, showing its interior packed with cots all set just a few feet from one another.

It comes as since summer, tens of thousands of asylum seekers – predominantly from Latin America – have been carted into New York and several other so-called ‘sanctuary’ cities, sometimes 2,000 at a time.

The sudden influx has put the city’s shelter system to its limit, Adams has warned last week, and reportedly cost taxpayers $1 billion in 2022 alone.

After several failed courses of action to quell the burden – such as the planned tent city in The Bronx and on Randall’s Island, and several pricey, non-sustainable alternatives such as The Watson and Row – Adams has faced criticism, and has repeatedly gone back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, more and more busses continue to arrive to the city’s Port Authority Bus Terminal each day – bringing with them hundreds of tired, huddled men, women, and children at a time.     

Those migrants have been ferried across the city, from shelter to shelter and to various hotels, as the city’s seemingly never-ending migrant saga continues to persist.

Adams has previously told citizens in his crime-ridden city to expect migrant facilities to soon grace  ‘every community,’ while warning residents they should expect shelters to pop up in their neighborhoods without warning.

Sources have said the mayor’s plans, however, have been poorly thought out and often fast-tracked, causing them to almost always fall apart. 

Adams, meanwhile, has remained bullish on asking for federal help, doing so again at  rally outside City Hall Sunday. 

Buses of migrants have been arriving in NYC since fall when Republican governors, primarily Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, began sending asylum seekers from the border to largely Democratic-leaning cities, causing the current crises. 

Washington has approved $800million in spending to aid the crisis but it will go to various cities across the country. 

Even if it were all going to New York, the city will still spend more money on its own to help the migrants, according to ABC7. 

On Sunday, despite the widely reported reservations exhibited by displace asylum seekers outside The Watson. Adams touted how in New York, migrants will live in better conditions than in other cities. 

‘People are sleeping on the streets in El Paso,’ Adams said at the rally. ‘There sleeping in airports. I spoke to my colleague in Chicago, people are sleeping in the basement of libraries. No family is sleeping on our streets.’ 

He added that there are no plans for the city to stop taking in migrants but that they will need extra preparation if the Supreme Court lets Title 42 – the pandemic rule making it harder to seek asylum in the US – expire. 

Activists are not happy with the constant moves, saying that it’s not an adequate fix.  

‘Now they’re going to be moved to a building that was not designed for living, that the city is gonna have to prepare for people to sleep in, and only for a short period of time,’ Josh Goldfein of the Legal Aid Society said. 

‘We’re gonna invest a lot of resources to get this building ready only to dismantle it again, I guess when cruise ships start coming in again.’

The location is also isolated and far away from accessing medical care and opportunities to work. 

‘The city has tens of thousands of New Yorkers in shelter currently who were there before the migrants started coming who could move out if they had some assistance,’ Goldfein added.

Earlier this year, Adams made headlines for saying ‘there is no more room’ in New York, after previously stating the city would always welcome migrants. 

 DailyMail.com has reached out to Adams’ office for comment.