Scenes from the asylum seeker standoff at the Watson Hotel

NYPD removed dozens of migrants who had camped on a sidewalk in Manhattan to protest the city-provided Red Hook shelter

A days-long standoff came to an end yesterday between the city and dozens of migrants who had refused to move to a 1,000 bed city-run shelter in Brooklyn. At about 8 p.m. Wednesday, the city conducted a sweep of asylum seekers camped outside a Manhattan hotel.

Giving the migrants just 15 minutes to gather any belongings, police and sanitation crews cleared them from the sidewalk in front of the Watson Hotel on West 57th Street.

An interpreter explained to Brooklyn Magazine that an NYPD community affairs officer told the men that, “They can either go to the Brooklyn location or to a Manhattan shelter, but the police are going to take anything they leave behind, provide them with a voucher and hold on to the items.”

The asylum seekers had rallied earlier in the day for work permits and to demand a place to stay with better conditions than the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook, which the city had made available — and which the migrants had described as lacking privacy, with rows of cots instead of beds and freezing conditions.

Some 600 asylees had been staying at the hotel at city expense until last Sunday, when the city attempted to transfer them to the Red Hook facility. After seeing the conditions there, some of the migrants — all single men — returned to the hotel, where they were denied reentry.

As the police instructed the more than two dozen remaining migrants to leave Wednesday, though, the men gathered what they could and removed themselves from the area to avoid arrest (and any potential violence) while volunteers scrambled to make sure any donations made it to the migrants.

Volunteers serve food to asylum seekers (Josh Pacheco)

In the end, no arrests were made. Any asylum seekers who declined housing at the cruise terminal were left to figure it out for themselves.

“The single men who were staying at the Watson have now all either chosen to transfer to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal — a humanitarian relief center that multiple elected officials today called a ‘warm’ location — or decided to leave our care by connecting with friends, family, or other networks,” Press secretary to the mayor Fabien Levy said in a statement.

“I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I didn’t think we would be left out on the street,” one of the men, who says he’s looking for a food delivery job, told Brooklyn Magazine on condition of anonymity. “We need food, blankets, but ultimately, we need help finding work.”

Another asylee who actually tried staying at the Red Hook facility said that there were icicles forming in the bathrooms and that navigating the city was ultimately too confusing. He couldn’t find his way back to the terminal after looking for a job, he said, so he returned to the encampment outside the hotel.

Bruno (Josh Pacheco)

Various local mutual aid projects that got their start during the pandemic rallied behind the asylum seekers over the course of the week, providing food, clothing and hygiene products. An anonymous $500 donation was made to secure two hotel rooms, which allowed for the asylum seekers to shower and to escape both the cold and the media scrutiny.

“It feels good that, in this chaotic space, people would come out to support us,” one asylee named Bruno said. “It gives me hope that there’s still good people out here.”

To be sure, not everyone was there to help. One man who was ultimately escorted away by police shouted anti-Black and anti-indigenous slurs at the asylum seekers.

“He was here talking shit to everyone. It was insane,” one asylum seeker told Brooklyn Magazine. He said this person — who was just one of several who spouted epithets while passing by — shouted, “‘Why are they on the sidewalk? This is a public street. They shouldn’t be here if they’re not Americans.’”

When the day was over, though, the sidewalk had been cleared and sanitation workers had removed most of the traces that the men had been there at all.

Here are a few more scenes from the day in front of the Watson Hotel.