Migrants now living in cars outside NYC hotel amid space crunch with area dubbed ‘New Ellis Island’
The dire shortage of shelter space during the Big Apple migrant crunch has forced some asylum seekers out onto the street and into cars parked in plain view outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan — which one official dubbed “a new Ellis Island,” a new report said.
At least four migrants who said they were booted from city shelters were spotted sleeping in cars in recent weeks just feet from the hotel that serves as the city’s main intake site for thousands of asylum seekers from the US border, Gothamist reported Wednesday.
“There’s no place in the hotel,” Venezuelan migrant Hugo Rafael Ramirez, 22, told the outlet. “It’s full.”
Another migrant, Yovani Nieves, said the white Mitsubishi Lancer he bought while working in Canada died when he pulled up to the hotel — and has been his home since the hotel turned him away.
“They’re just helping the people who have families, little kids,” said Nieves, 23, who is also from Venezuela. “If you’re a single man they kick you out, send you to the street.”
At least two of the cars — which were first spotted by Gothamist on Christmas Day — were still there on Wednesday, one of them with a flat tire as migrants came in and out of the vehicles.
The car with the flat tire, a white Mitsubishi with tinted windows and Washington state plates, had blankets in the back seat. The second vehicle was a blue minivan with paper license plates and bags piled up in the trunk and the back seat.
City officials have struggled to find space for the nearly 70,000 migrants from the US border who are being housed and fed by taxpayers — among the more than 165,000 who have arrived in the five boroughs since the spring of 2022.
The Roosevelt has served as the main intake center for the migrants, with one city official telling Gothamist that the hotel has essentially become a “new Ellis Island.”
In October, Mayor Eric Adams announced that single migrants would have to reapply for a city shelter space after 30 days and those with children would have to do so every 60 days.
Thousands of migrants were evicted from city hotels and shelters this week as the latest shelter-limit deadline arrived — leaving many uncertain where they would find a new bed.
The cars parked outside the Roosevelt have out-of-state license plates from as far off as Alabama and Texas, and all had at least one parking violation according to a city database.
Empty pizza boxes and food containers were seen scattered in the vehicles.
One neighborhood security guard said he started seeing the four-wheel dormitories on the block last month, calling the situation “a very big toxic nuisance.”
“All of a sudden, little by little, cars with migrants with out-of-state plates have been coming in,” security guard Angel Narvaez told Gothamist.
Officials at City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.
Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy
