The city conducted a sweep of the dozens of remaining migrants camped outside a Manhattan hotel Wednesday night, who have refused to leave the sidewalk since the weekend.
NYPD officers arrived at the scene just before 8 p.m. and instructed the group of about 25 to 30 people to leave the area outside the Watson Hotel and remove their belongings or face arrest.
Sewage crews then cleared the pavement, where asylum seekers were sleeping on makeshift beds – dumping the remaining items on the street in rubbish trucks.
A City Hall spokesman said “almost all” of the remaining single men outside Watson decided to get off the streets somewhere warm.
“The single men who were staying at Watson have now chosen to either transfer to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal — a humanitarian aid center that many elected officials today called a ‘hot’ location — or have decided to leave our care by contacting friends. family or other networks,” the mayor’s press secretary Fabien Levy said in a statement.
The migrants have been sleeping and living outside the hotel since Sunday, when they were asked to move to a new shelter at the Brooklyn cruise terminal in Red Hook. They said the conditions in the shelter are unsustainable and they prefer to sleep on the street in the cold.
The city is transporting single adult men from the hotel to the cruise terminal in order to transfer Watson to temporary housing for immigrant families.
The NYPD and Department of Sanitation remove the last of the migrants camped outside the Watson Hotel in Manhattan on February 1, 2023.
Sanitation workers cleaning the sidewalk from the remaining objects.
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About 25 to 30 people had been camping outside the hotel since the weekend.
Immigrants outside the hotel were told to move to the new facility at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook.
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Immigrants and activists were trying to protest the city’s moves when police moved in and ordered everyone to leave.
Some of the remaining migrants boarded a city bus headed for the shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, while others who still refused to go were left to wander nearby – unsure of where they would spend the night.
One migrant in the group who remained adamant against being moved to the shed-like shelter said he did not know what to do.
“I really don’t know where we’re going to go now,” Randy Chirinos, 29, told The Post.
After the raid, about a dozen people stood with their belongings in garbage bags and suitcases in a nearby corner.
Levy said “most” of the migrants decided to board buses bound for the Brooklyn cruise terminal, while six chose to head to other cities.
He added that “the remaining asylum seekers chose to go their separate ways as the rioters outside Watson continued to encourage them to risk their lives in these freezing temperatures and not accept asylum.”
Mayor Eric Adams has accused activists supporting the encamped migrants as “rioters” who encourage asylum seekers to sleep in the cold rather than take the city’s offer of safe and warm shelter and meals.
No arrests were made, the NYPD said.
A local resident who lives directly across the street from the hotel told The Post he was surprised the city did anything about the immigrants who camped on the sidewalk.
The man, who declined to give his name, said he felt the city “turned a blind eye.”
“These people need services, they need help. There is no need for luxury accommodations in Manhattan,” he said. “Are these activists thinking about the next step? What’s the end game?”
He said the encampment shows the larger issue of the immigration crisis facing the city.
“I don’t think there is anyone [city government] he has a plan,” he said. “No one in New York has the political courage to make the hard choices.”
