Thousands of asylum-seekers are pouring into New York City amid a national political battle over immigration — but as hundreds arrive in Staten Island they’re landing in the crosshairs of another ideological fight playing out locally.
Mayor Eric Adams announced this week that new emergency shelters would soon be coming to communities across the five boroughs. In the meantime, migrants are being housed in shelters and empty hotels.
In the West Shore neighborhood of Travis, where two-thirds of voters backed Donald Trump, the transfer of migrants to three little-used hotels has divided the close-knit community. The arrival of roughly 600 asylum-seekers from Latin America has fostered suspicion, acts of compassion and a familiar refrain in the city’s most conservative borough: That they’ve been forgotten by City Hall.