Co-op and Condo Residents Join Protests Over Migrant Shelters

More than 200 angry New Yorkers, many of them residents of co-op and condos, rallied outside a shuttered Staten Island nursing home on Sunday to protest its proposed conversion to a migrant shelter, The New York Post reports.

The Not-In-My-Back-Yard protest was organized by Guardian Angels founder and former mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, who was among about a dozen demonstrators later arrested by for blocking traffic. It followed a similar rally last week to protest the creation of a 1,000-bed migrant shelter on the former Creedmoor Psychiatric Center campus in eastern Queens.

“Four thousand demonstrators showed up,” Sliwa said of the Queens protest. “And I can tell you, most of them were moderate Democrats who had co-ops, condos, homes, and they said, ‘No more! No more! You’re not destroying our neighborhood!'” 

The administration of Mayor Eric Adams has been forced to scramble for space as some 100,000 asylum seekers from the U.S. border have flooded the five boroughs since last spring — with nearly 60,000 currently under city care.

“As we have repeatedly said, with more than 100,000 asylum seekers asking for care since the spring of 2022, New York City has been left largely alone to respond with a national humanitarian crisis,” a spokesperson for Adams said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the Post reports, a new Siena College poll suggests that the protesters on Staten Island and in Queens are not the only New Yorkers who are growing weary of the influx of migrants — or "illegals," as many prefer to call them. According to the poll, 82% of respondents said the surge of migrants to New York is a serious problem — with 54% saying it’s a “very serious” problem.

“New Yorkers — including huge majorities of Democrats, Republicans, independents, upstaters and down-staters — overwhelmingly say that the recent influx of migrants to New York is a serious problem for the state,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg.