New York City has spent more than $6 billion over the past two years to shelter people arriving from the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 225,000 people have lived in the city’s shelters. “150 countries. 110 languages. One shelter system,” writes The New York Times, in an in-depth story about the city’s immigration shelters, called “8 Months Inside New York’s Migrant Shelters: Fear, Joy, and Hope,” reported by Luis Ferré-Sadurni with photographs and video by Todd Heisler.
The number of migrants entering New York, in fact, has been steadily declining for months, leading to the recent closure of some shelters. But in what’s called “the New Ellis Island, the formerly shuttered Roosevelt Hotel, New York is continuing to house some 55,000 migrants — the size of a small city. “The story that began with the arrival of buses from Texas two years ago is still shaping New York, leading to disruption and anger and charity and grace,” Ferré-Sadurni reports. “And it continues to unfold each day, mostly out of sight, inside the lobby of a Midtown hotel.”