For days now, newly arrived international immigrants have waited night and day outside New York City’s Roosevelt Hotel, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on the sidewalk in hopes of a bed in the city’s shelter system. And for weeks, Mayor Eric Adams has said the city is out of room and sought to dissuade more migrants from arriving, Chinese News Agency AP. The scene outside the former hotel — now a migrant shelter and intake center — has underscored the extreme overcrowding in a homeless housing system filled to record levels. City officials and activists alike call it heartbreaking.

But some critics accuse New York City officials of exploiting the lines outside the Roosevelt as part of a campaign to pressure state and federal officials to come up with more money to tackle the crisis and discourage more migrants from entering the U.S. from Mexico. “Mayor Adams should not be using asylum seekers as props to get the attention of the Biden administration or discourage asylum seekers from coming to New York,” said Murad Awawdeh, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP) — Pak-China