After a year of operation, the migrant shelter on 359 Stockton St., on the border of Bushwick and Bed-Stuy, has closed abruptly leaving hundreds of men without a stable home. All of the migrants, who mostly speak French, Wolof, and other West African languages, were referred to the Asylum Application Help Center to be reassigned to a shelter, according to the Mayor’s office.
While some migrants were told to leave over the past month, others were asked to leave the shelter this past week. Migrants told Documented they were not given advance notice and had to exit 12 to 24 hours after getting notified by the building management. By Sunday, the remaining migrant men in the building were asked to leave.
One asylum seeker, who has been in New York since January, watched other shelter residents leave over the past few weeks. By the time he was kicked out on Thursday, there were around 11 people left on his floor, he said. Each floor of Stockton shelter has often sheltered more than 100 men at a time on sleeping cots.
“At 11 p.m. on Wednesday night, I was told that I had a meeting with the [managers of the building],” said the 18-year-old asylum seeker from Guinea who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “They didn’t tell me I was getting kicked out, but when I went the next morning, they said I had to leave that same day.”
On Monday, two men wearing NYC ID cards and utility jackets with R&R universal solutions, a janitorial service company, were helping to clear out the building. Three other men were loading storage boxes into an awaiting truck.
Previously, the migrant men had been given some notice by shelter operators, said Mariel Acosta, a long-time volunteer at Bushwick City Farm. This time, many felt blindsided by the shelter closure. “It’s been very messy,” Acosta said.
Also Read: Asylum Seekers Lack Functioning Shower in New Brooklyn Shelter for Eight Days and Counting
Migrant men told Documented on Monday that the food given to them by the Stockton shelter management was often bad, which led them to start cooking outside on the street beside the farm. James McDonaugh, a New York City resident who has been assisting the migrant men with French translations and cultural programming, told Documented that about two to three weeks ago, the police came and took the kitchen items following complaints from residents in the area.
State Sen. Jabari Brisport, whose office is next to the Stockton shelter, told Documented in a statement via email: “I was not notified that the shelter would be closing until after it closed.”
Brisport said his office has offered resources and referrals to individuals at the Stockton shelter while it was in operation and heard the conditions there were brutal.
“The shelters they’re being relocated to may not be safe or sanitary either; the shelter system is run at the local level by the Mayor’s office and we need the Adams administration to prioritize human dignity and democratic transparency,” he said.
A representative from Brisport’s office added that the senator had tried repeatedly to schedule a visit with the Stockton Street shelter but never got access.
The Mayor’s press office told Documented that there were around 270 people when the migrant site on Stockton closed over the weekend.
“They were all referred to the application help center,” the Mayor’s press office said, adding that the office couldn’t speak to how many migrant men pursued that option. “Since this crisis started, we regularly open and close shelters depending on need. We re-evaluate when our contracts expire. Obviously now, closures are also in part due to decreasing numbers of people we are seeing come every week.”
Also Read: DHS Transfers Migrant Families Out of Shelters With 24 to 48 Hour Notice
Over 211,100 migrants have come through the city’s intake system since the spring of 2022. There are still currently 64,200 migrants in the city’s care, and the city is currently operating 212 emergency sites. From July 29 to Aug. 4, more than 900 new migrants entered the city’s care, according to the Mayor’s press office.
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Guelen, a migrant from Guinea, who wished to be identified by his first name only, told Documented that he had been at the shelter for almost three months and was asked to leave on Sunday. “Since I was the last one out, it was clear what was happening,” Guelen said in French.
Guelen said he was given printed directions to head to a migrant site near JFK airport, in English, a language he does not speak. He sent a photo of the instructions to McDonaugh via WhatsApp.
“All he was given was very confusing English language directions to go to the new JFK shelter, which is way in the middle of nowhere,” McDonaugh said.
According to several migrants, many of the migrants living at the shelter were asked to move to Long Island City, while some were asked to go to a migrant shelter at the site of Creedmoor Psychiatric Facility, and others were asked to go to a migrant shelter at the site of an airport warehouse in JFK.
