Feds snag Manhattan office space to process migrant work permits as crisis rages
The Biden administration has snagged office space in Lower Manhattan’s financial district to help migrants apply for work permits, as thousands of new asylum seekers continue pouring across the country’s southern border.
The federal Department of Homeland Security has secured the fifth floor of an office building at 25 Beaver St., which also counts the state Office of Court Administration and other government agencies as tenants, a well-placed source told The Post.
The insider said two of the building’s elevators will be restricted for use by migrants to avoid disrupting the flow of other tenants and that tables will be set up in the lobby to guide the asylum seekers.
City Hall confirmed Sunday that it has been notified by federal officials they intend to use the address as a processing center for migrants to secure work visas and that staffers from Mayor Eric Adams’ new “Asylum Application Help Center” will send staffers there to assist in the effort.
Gov. Kathy Hochul spokesman Avi Small added in a statement, “We are grateful to the federal government for committing to a Month of Action on asylum seekers — set to begin this week — and we will continue partnering with the federal government and New York City leaders to address this crisis.”
DHS, whose staffers were in the downtown office building Friday, had no comment.
The move to sign up migrants for work permits comes just days after the White House and DHS announced they cleared the way for thousands more Venezuelan migrants to get work permits by expanding Temporary Protected Status to refugee seekers who fled the economically troubled country for the US.
Both Hochul and Adams had urged President Biden to ease the lengthy 180-day period for asylum seekers to obtain worker’s permits both so they can support themselves and also to try to help New York City’s overwhelmed shelter system.
More than half of the record 100,000 people crammed into the city shelters are migrants who came to New York from the southern border.
More than 113,000 asylum seekers have been helped by the city since the spring of 2022.
But placing migrants at 200 city hotels and other emergency shelters has provoked an enormous backlash from New Yorkers in the five boroughs as well as the suburbs.
In response to the housing crisis, the mayor last week modified New York City’s “right to shelter” law that requires anyone entering the city to automatically be provided a free place to stay, a policy that critics say has served as a magnet for desperate asylum seekers to flock to the Big Apple instead of other parts of the country.
Single migrants will now be kicked out of New York City shelters within 30 days — half the previous allowed stay.
Adams, during a Sunday interview on WABC’s “Up Close with Bill Ritter,” thanked Biden for easing up the work requirements for Venezuelans but said the policy should be extended to other asylum seekers..
“I don’t know the answer, the limitation. I know that there was a real push because we had TPS already for Venezuelans, so I’m not sure of why we just limited [it] to that group. I’m hoping we can expand it because it will solve two problems: Number one, we have a great deal of jobs that we need to fill, and number two, we will be able to have those workers fill these jobs that we need,” Adams said.
Absent stricter federal border security and more federal funding, the city will still be saddled with massive costs because of the unrelenting influx of migrants and that the financial stress will hurt the Big Apple’s quality of life, Adams said.
“I’ve been extremely clear, and I am not going to attempt to sugar-coat what New Yorkers must know: This is going to be extremely devastating for our city,” Adams said, who has been criticized for previously saying the crisis could “destroy” the city.
He has ordered city agencies to come up with 5% in cuts by next month and 15% in all by next spring unless there is significant federal or state reimbursement for the costs of caring for migrants.
“We think the accumulation of this can be $12 billion just based on what we have, and we’re still getting 10,000 [migrants] a month,” Adams said. “It’s going to hurt, and those dollars have to come from somewhere, and it’s going to hurt those low-income New Yorkers and those who are in real need of city services.”
-Additional reporting by Jared Downing
