Migrant tent city under NYC’s BQE torn down by city: ‘They left me like a dog in the street’
The mini tent city near the Brooklyn Navy Yard where more than a dozen migrants had been living was cleaned up by the city Friday — leaving one asylum seeker sobbing, “They’ve left me like a dog on the street.”
Multiple cops and Department of Sanitation workers were spotted under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway overpass in the Clinton Hill neighborhood, where the group of mostly Venezuelan migrants has been sleeping rough this week.
“The police just came and took everything,” cried Jose Alvarado, 42. “When I begged for them to leave me my clothes, an officer hit me on my hands just to get to my clothes. They didn’t even leave me a toothbrush; they took everything from me.
“They’ve left me like a dog on the street.”
The group of migrants set up their encampment — complete with three tents, a tarp and multiple mattresses — after they were recently booted from the nearby mega-shelter at 47 Hall Street following a fight with other asylum seekers.
The asylum seekers claimed the fight erupted over what they described as poor conditions inside the shelter, which is designed to cater to roughly 2,000 single adult migrants.
They said there were roughly 100 people for just two bathrooms in the section of the shelter they were staying — and that tensions just boiled over when other migrants started “shooting up” drugs.
“It’s more comfortable to be on the streets than up there,” one of the migrants told The Post less than 24 hours before their tent encampment was torn down.
The city’s Homeless Encampment Task Force was made aware of the tent structures under the BQE this week and gave notice.
The sudden removal came a day after The Post reported the tiny encampment had sparked fears of a “new normal” in the wake of the city’s 60-day shelter stay limit for single adult migrants.
“I’m worried because they’ve got a time limit to find housing. Ultimately, these people are going to resort to living on the streets. There’s going to be encampments showing up left, right and center,” a local resident said.
The fate of the tent encampment migrants wasn’t immediately clear.
Under the new 60-day restriction announced by Mayor Eric Adams earlier this week, migrants unable to find alternate accommodation by the end of their limit will then have to reapply for a new placement at the city’s asylum seeker arrival center.
The mayor said the goal wasn’t to force migrants out of shelters and onto the streets, saying each migrant would have multiple touchpoints with case workers to discuss their options and plan for the next steps.
During a radio appearance Friday morning, Adams defended the Big Apple’s handling of the migrant crisis, claiming asylum seekers weren’t sleeping on the streets like in other major US cities.
“Unlike other cities, you don’t see tents around our city, people living in tents, or children living on the streets,” he told Caribbean Power Jam 93.5.
More than 54,800 asylum seekers are currently staying at one of the city’s 188 emergency shelter sites set up to cater for the surge in migrants, according to City Hall’s latest figures.
In the last week alone, roughly 2,800 asylum seekers arrived in the Big Apple — adding to the more than 90,000 that have flooded in since April last year.
