A fight over food, another over the use of a folding chair. Dozens of people rushing a closed waiting-room entrance trying to get out of the rain. People passing out while waiting in line, or getting sent to the hospital after collapsing to the ground shivering from cold.
THE CITY reviewed dozens of internal reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request chronicling the most serious incidents that occurred at the city’s two main waiting rooms for adult migrants – the daytime one called St. Brigid’s in a former Catholic school in the East Village, and the overnight one called Bathgate, in Claremont in The Bronx.
The 73 reports span early December to mid-March, a period when the city saw an unprecedented collapse in its decades old “right to shelter” protections, as a surge of migrants entered shelters and the city set strict 30-day limits on their stays. Around 35,000 adults passed through these waiting rooms, in some cases seeking another shelter cot, a wait that at times took more than two weeks, for another 30-day shelter stay.
The incidents described are all dubbed “Level 1,” the most serious, and could include, weapons, violence or threats, injuries where someone was taken to the hospital, or cases where 911 was called, according to internal Office of Emergency Management guidance.
Many of the documents detail incidents like stolen phones and fights that could have happened at any of the city’s hundreds of shelters.
But around two dozen incidents point to unique issues in the ad-hoc and ever-changing separate system for migrants, in which people wait days or weeks with limited access to food and no showers for a new shelter placement.
One particularly stark case took place on the rainy evening of Dec. 28, at Bathgate. The site had reached capacity, with 351 people inside, just before 9 p.m., when staff started telling people waiting outside to go to two other overflow waiting rooms, one an hour away on public transit and the other nearly twice as far.
Dozens of people tried to force their way into the building anyway, “punching and kicking external doors/window and overwhelming site security capabilities,” the report reads. Staff on site called police to help them regain control of the situation.
That same night, a second fight broke out just before midnight when someone else tried to get in out of the rain and was turned away.
“Site Manager attempted to deescalate the situation by acknowledging the inconvenience of going to another site so late in the evening and explained his options again,” the report reads. “Guest became irate and began punching/kicking the entry way walls and window, verbally threatening staff, and attempted to encourage other guests in the immediate area to push their way through security.”
Zach Iscol, the head of the city’s Office of Emergency Management, which oversees the two waiting rooms, said serious incidents have been relatively rare.
“The stress, the languages, the different populations, the mental health, you would think that we would have a lot more issues at these sites than we have,” he said. “That’s in part a credit to many of the people in our care, but it’s also a huge credit to the staff that’s working at these sites.”
‘Basic Human Necessities’
On New Year’s Day at Bathgate, a fight broke out over a stolen blanket, according to another incident report. On Feb. 16 someone passed out on line while waiting to get indoors just after 9 p.m. Two days later, a fight broke out over a folding chair.
Outside St. Brigid’s, in late December into early January, lines of hundreds of migrants would form in the frigid early morning hours waiting to get in. The internal reports showed three fights broke out over disputes among people waiting in line, one of which reported on by the New York Post. On Feb. 15 a scuffle erupted inside the facility over food.
THE CITY previously reported that overnight waiting rooms had initially been offering limited food at the waiting rooms, tuna and crackers at the overnight waiting room, while the daytime facility offered a snack that included a roll, a hard-boiled egg and a piece of fruit. Both daytime and overnight waiting rooms now provide two meals each day, an OEM spokesperson confirmed.
“They engaged in an argument over food. The unidentified guest punched in the chest/neck area with a closed fist. The fight was broken up by other guests, at which time the unidentified guest ran out of the facility,” the report reads.
On March 19, shortly after the waiting room opened for the morning, a man was rushed to the hospital after collapsing on the ground shaking while saying he was cold, a report shows.
Mammad Mahmoodi, the cofounder of the volunteer group EVLoves NYC, which has provided meals and other essentials like hand warmers and sleeping bags to those waiting outside St. Brigid’s, said the internal incident reports confirm what he’d seen in person.
“The city did not want to provide the absolute basic human necessities to these folks,” Mahmoodi said. “The fact that there are fights over a folding chair meant that if someone overnight would sit on a chair or would stand in a corner, literally. Or the fact that there were fights over blankets, that they would literally be freezing.”
Still, Mahmoodi said, what was remarkable is not the incidents detailed in the city’s internal reports but how often migrants sorted issues out themselves under difficult conditions.
“What’s the most shocking is that even though all these folks were in absolute survival mode, how civil and gentle and nice they were about that,” Mahmoodi said.
Many migrants passing through the waiting rooms described harrowing experiences, saying they dread what might be in store when they show up to St. Brigid’s.
“If I spend less than two days, that’s good. If it’s more than two days, it’s going to be another headache,” said Alpha Amadou in French, a 31-year-old migrant from Guinea, whose time is set to run out April 17.
He’s already waited for shelter several times, since the city implemented strict 30-day limits on shelter stays for adults with no children last fall. In January, he waited 16 days for a cot. A month later, he waited 11 days. During that time, he regularly saw fights break out and people on edge.
“There were so many people, and so little food,” he said in French, reached on the phone Thursday. Some nights he spent on the floor of waiting rooms, others he spent on the train.
“It wasn’t easy, I can’t lie, especially with the cold,” he said.
The reports not only show the dire conditions faced by migrants passing through the city’s waiting rooms, but also the untenable situation staff working at the sites confronted, trying to maintain order among thousands of exhausted and hungry people.
Iscol, the OEM Commissioner, said over the city had worked over the past several months to improve conditions at the waiting rooms, including by letting people in when long lines formed outside, and calling people with shelter placements so they didn’t feel like they had to come to a waiting room every day hoping for a new short-term shelter placement.
“We are a city that is doing everything we can up against one of the largest humanitarian crises to reach our shores with very little help from the federal government and the state,” Iscol said. “Nobody here in the city is happy saying ‘let’s make people wait.’ We are out of space.”
‘Extenuating Circumstances’
The look behind the scenes at the two main waiting rooms for adult migrants comes at a transitional moment, as the city is about to phase out the current system for seeking 30-day shelter stays, according to terms of a agreement in mid-March the city reached with the Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society about its obligations under the city’s unique right-to-shelter protections, which Mayor Eric Adams had previously argued wasn’t sustainable with migrants arriving in such large numbers.
The March settlement required the city to reduce the backlog of people waiting for shelter beds and to improve conditions at overnight waiting rooms, namely by providing showers on site and at least two meals per day at each location.
At the same time, the settlement now limits adult migrants over the age of 21 to just one 30-day stay, except in “extenuating circumstances.” (Young adults under the age of 21 will now get one 60-day stay.)
People with nowhere to go as their time runs out can apply for an extension to their shelter stay, though it’s still unclear how exactly migrants can prove they’re deserving an extension or how willing the city will be to grant them as that system is expected to kick in later this month.
Earlier this month, the city had shut down the overnight Bathgate waiting room, directing those with nowhere to go overnight to a church in Crown Heights, according to signs posted at St. Brigid last week. But the city blew an April 8 deadline to eliminate the waitlist for shelter, Gothamist reported, and as of Tuesday, migrants waiting for a 30-day shelter cot still had to spend the night in overnight waiting rooms without cots.
There are signs of improvement; the waitlist for cots has dramatically decreased in recent months. And on Tuesday, Molly Schaeffer, the Director of Asylum Seeker Operations testified before the Council the average wait for a shelter placement was now down to under 24 hours.