New York is a city of immigrants – but its mayor says migration crisis may ‘destroy’ it

Published

2 years ago

September 27, 2023

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If it wasn’t for the soldiers on the door, you’d walk on by, oblivious to the people behind the window.

Just off Manhattan’s Madison Avenue, between the midtown skyscrapers, a shuttered bar is now the impromptu overflow for New York’s central migrant registration centre. And through the steamed-up windows is a room full of stories.

Each person has a long journey behind them, from Africa, the Middle East and South America to the southern border of the United States and now here.

Some flee persecution, some escape war. Some have had lives upturned by climate change. All need work. All seek a better life.

“It wasn’t going well for us in Venezuela,” mother of two Danieles tells me.

“Most of all it was for the two of them.” She points to her toddlers.

Nearby, Omar, damp and with no belongings and no bed for the night, says: “We’re finding a way to get a future, a good economy to try to help us and our families back in Venezuela to be able to live.”

Fear and hope; the push and pull of humanity. They are familiar stories that I’ve heard over and over on the migration trail, from Lebanon to Turkey, from Greece to France, from Texas to New York.

The Big Apple is, proudly, a city of immigrants. Nearly 40% of people here were born in another country. And its Statue of Liberty is a symbol of a nation built on immigration.

Yet now New York is the test for a nation divided by migration.

It’s not entirely clear why Britain’s home secretary has chosen America to raise, some say grandstand, her proposals to tackle global migration.

If Suella Braverman thinks America is a migration showcase, she will be bitterly disappointed.

If she wants to use it as an example of a failing system then it’s an awkward message diplomatically, and she’ll find a government here that would rather not talk about it.

Just as in Britain and Europe, migration is a bitterly divisive issue here.

America’s southern border is a perfect example of an asylum system that is neither firm nor fair. On that, she will find common ground with Britain’s own system.

New York is a snapshot of a nationwide challenge. More than 100,000 people have arrived on Manhattan Island over the past year.

The city authorities recently signed a $275m contract with the Hotel Association of New York to set aside 5,000 rooms for migrants. Yet more than that arrive most weeks.

There are currently more than 60,000 people housed in 200 different sites across the city.

Most arrive via the southern border with Mexico after a journey through Central America. In August, 82,000 people entered Panama overland from South America.

The numbers for this year are looking set to be double the number in 2022.

As they pass into America to claim asylum they immediately become pawns in the politics, most pushed north to be someone else’s problem. And if that sounds familiar it’s because it’s what’s happening in Europe too, from Italy, to France, to the UK.

For a sense of America’s broken system, consider this: more than two million immigration cases are pending nationwide. That is up from about 100,000 a decade ago and the average time to determine a case is now four years.

This month the city’s mayor issued a stark assessment of the challenge as he sees it.

“We’re getting no support on this national crisis. We’re receiving no support,” Eric Adams said.

“And let me tell you something New Yorkers: never in my life, have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this. I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City, destroy New York City.”

Mr Adams is a Democrat, the party of President Biden with whom he is now clashing over the issue of migration.

Mr Adams blames the president. Mr Biden, on the occasions that he acknowledges the issue, blames it on a system he can’t change without bipartisan agreement, which he will never get.

And that’s the nub of it. Whether it’s in the villages of Kent, the islands of Greece, the towns of Texas or the streets of Manhattan there is no common ground on migration. Politicians represent divided societies. It’s “we can do it” up against “we really can’t”.

Between the hard line and the compassion is a reality. This is a time of unprecedented migration. The movement we are seeing represents a new normal that is testing open societies globally.

US

Hundreds of Texan National Guard troops arrive at army base near Chicago

Published

7 hours ago

October 8, 2025

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Hundreds of Texan National Guard troops arrive at army base near Chicago

Hundreds of National Guard soldiers from Texas have arrived at an army facility outside Chicago, as part of Donald Trump’s threat to deploy troops targeting Democratic-led cities.

On Sunday, the US president ordered the deployment of 300 National Guard soldiers to America’s third-largest city, prompting a strong response from local protestors and politicians.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has accused Mr Trump of using troops as “political props” and “pawns”.

On Monday, Illinois’ attorneys failed in a legal attempt to block their deployment, which they labelled “illegal, dangerous and unconstitutional”.

‘Ready to go’

“The elite Texas National Guard are on the ground and ready to go,” said Greg Abbott, Republican governor of Texas, in a post on X.

“They are putting America first by ensuring that the federal government can safely enforce federal law.”

Armed Border Patrol agents have been making arrests in an immigration crackdown that began last month, targeting immigrant-heavy and largely Latino areas, which has prompted a series of protests.

In September, in a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself as a military officer in the movie Apocalypse Now, with the title changed to “Chipocalypse Now” over flames and the city skyline.

The post – a screenshot from X – said: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’.

‘Aggressive overreach’

Officials in Will County, southwest of Chicago, said they were not warned by the federal government about the deployment at the US Army Reserve Centre in Elwood.

“The arrival of the National Guard by the Trump Administration is an aggressive overreach. Our federal government moving armed troops into our community should be alarming to everyone,” said Will County’s executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant.

National Guard troops are state-based militia who normally answer to local governors and are often deployed in response to natural disasters.

While the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws is limited, Mr Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.

The National Guard’s exact mission in Illinois was not immediately clear, although the Trump administration has an aggressive immigration enforcement operation, and protesters have frequently rallied at an immigration building outside Chicago in Broadview.

The president repeatedly has described Chicago in hostile terms, calling it a “hell hole” of crime, although police statistics show significant drops in most crimes, including murders.

Following Mr Trump’s earlier deployment of troops to Los Angeles and Washington DC, he has also ordered soldiers to Portland, Oregon, which he has described as a “war zone”.

None have been deployed there yet, as a legal battle between his administration and Oregon is waged in the courts.

Local Democratic governor Tina Kotek has insisted there is “no insurrection” in the state.

The US president has defied staunch opposition from Democratic mayors and governors, who say his claims of lawlessness and violence do not reflect reality.

However, troops are also being sent to Memphis, where they would be welcomed by Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Lee. He said they will “play a critical support role” for local law enforcement.

US

Three people critical after helicopter crash in California

Published

1 day ago

October 7, 2025

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Three people critical after helicopter crash in California

Three people have been critically injured after a helicopter crash in Sacramento, according to the Californian city’s fire department.

Images from the scene show a medical helicopter lying upside down on the eastbound lanes of Highway 50.

The helicopter had taken a patient to a hospital and was returning to the place it had been dispatched from when it experienced an “in-air emergency” just after 7pm local time (3am UK time), according to Captain Justin Sylvia, from the Sacramento Fire Department.

He said there were a pilot, nurse, and paramedic on board at the time of the crash, who were taken to local hospitals in “critical condition”. Mr Sylvia said the crew consisted of two women and one man.

One of the women was trapped underneath the helicopter, with civilians on the highway helping the fire department to lift part of the helicopter out of the way to free the victim and get her into an ambulance.

“It took every ounce of all approximately 15 people to move that aircraft up just enough to get her out,” Mr Sylvia said at a news conference.

He added: “There’s a pretty large debris field around that at this point. The lucky portion for us, I’d say, is the fact that the helicopter did not catch on fire.”

No vehicles were involved in the crash and no one on the highway was injured, Mr Sylvia said, adding that this was “mind-blowing” given that the helicopter crashed in the centre of the road.

“People reported that they basically saw the helicopter kind of going down quickly. So all the traffic slowed down,” he explained.

Sacramento City councilwoman Lisa Kaplan said she was on a ride-along with local law enforcement responding to the crash.

She described plumes of white smoke coming out of the crashed helicopter.

“It’s really sombering and sobering. I am up flying with sheriff pilots that do this day in and day out. And it really makes you grateful for every day and grateful for our officers and our medical pilots,” she said.

The road is expected to be closed for an extended time, according to Officer Michael Harper, a spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol.

“The cause of the crash is still under investigation,” his colleague, Officer Mike Carillo, added.

The helicopter appears to belong to REACH Air Medical Services, which confirmed to ABC7 that three of its crew were hurt in the crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

US

US Supreme Court rejects appeal request from Ghislaine Maxwell

Published

2 days ago

October 6, 2025

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US Supreme Court rejects appeal request from Ghislaine Maxwell

The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal request from Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned ex-girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, over her criminal conviction.

Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years in prison after being convicted in December 2021 on sex trafficking charges.

Her lawyers argued she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.

The nine justices declined to take up a case that would have drawn renewed attention to the sexual-abuse saga.

US President Donald Trump and his administration, which urged the court not to accept the case, have been condemned for refusing to publicly release all the files from Epstein’s case.

Maxwell was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July.

As usual, the justices on the highest court in the US did not explain why they turned down the appeal.

Maxwell’s legal team argued she shouldn’t have faced prosecution because of a deal that Epstein, who took his own life while in prison in 2019, made with federal prosecutors in Miami.

The 2007 agreement protected his “potential co-conspirators” from federal charges anywhere in the country, they said.

Maxwell was prosecuted in Manhattan, and the federal appeals court there ruled that the prosecution was proper.

A jury found her guilty of sex trafficking a teenage girl, among other charges.

Maxwell was given limited immunity when Mr Blanche interviewed her over the summer, allowing her to speak freely without fear of prosecution for anything she said except for in the event of a false statement.

She repeatedly denied seeing any sexually inappropriate interactions involving Mr Trump, according to records released in August meant to distance the president from the disgraced financer.

Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges and was accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls.

A month later, he was found dead in a New York jail cell in what investigators described as a suicide.

Maxwell’s move to a lower security facility was criticised by the family of Epstein abuse survivor Virginia Giuffre, who died in April, and accusers Annie and Maria Farmer.

Describing Maxwell as a “sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions”, they said in a statement the transfer “smacks of a cover up. The victims deserve better”.

When it announced in July that no additional documents from the investigation would be released, the US Justice Department declared that Epstein had killed himself, despite conspiracy theories to the contrary.

A “client list” that US Attorney General Pam Bondi had intimated was on her desk did not actually exist, the department said.

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