NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — The new intake center for asylum seekers at the historic Roosevelt Hotel started operations on Friday.
The Roosevelt Hotel, which has been closed for almost three years now, will serve as a centralized location from which the city will move asylum seekers to homeless shelters or one of nine refugee camps, dubbed Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers by the city.
On Friday, 20 buses shuttled asylum seekers to the hotel at the corner of East 45th Street and Madison Avenue starting just before 7 a.m.
Signs directed people to fill out forms and proceed through a check-in process.
The intake center is supposed to connect newly-arrived asylum seekers with services like enrollment in city schools, health insurance, legal support, medical care and family reconnection services.
The city is relying on nonprofits to help new arrivals at the Port Authority Bus Terminal get to the intake center.
The hotel also opened 175 rooms to families with children arriving in New York City. The housing program will scale to about 850 of the hotel’s total 1,000 rooms, according to Mayor Eric Adams.
Other adults without children will reportedly be housed in the common spaces of the hotel.
The city claims more than 65,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott started bussing migrants from the southern border to New York City in the summer of 2022.
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