Advocates Expect Thousands of Asylum Seekers To Arrive In NY In Coming Months

A woman and her two children, ages 5 and 8, arrived in New York City from the U.S.-Mexico border in the last week.

NY1 met her as she was visiting Central American Legal Assistance (CALA), which has been representing asylum-seekers for free since 1986. Attorneys at the Williamsburg, Brooklyn nonprofit organization asked that we not use her name for fear of hurting the asylum case they may prepare for her and her children.

She told lawyers they spent nearly two years as refugees, after fleeing death threats from the notorious MS-13 gang in Honduras.  

The woman explained that they were living on the streets of Mexico just south of the U.S. border until people took her in.  

“One lady there gave me a place to live, and there we were because the mafia was kidnapping people who are in the streets. One cannot be in the streets,” she said through an interpreter.

They applied for asylum at the U.S. at the border two weeks ago and were let in, an easier process compared to what transpired during the Trump administration.

“We have a group of people who have been subjected to U.S.-inflicted trauma,” said CALA Legal Director Heather Axford.

Two years ago, President Donald Trump started what’s called the Remain In Mexico program, sending people seeking asylum at the Southern border back to Mexico to wait for their court dates.

"They turn themselves in, they sought protection and they were sent back. They were placed in life-threatening circumstance for over a year," Axford said.

Of the more than 70,000 people nonprofit organizations say were sent back, 25,000 asylum cases remain open, and President Joe Biden is slowly allowing those applicants into the U.S. as their cases play out.

"They’ve got to start processing people more quickly. Lives are at stake," Axford said.

She and other providers expect 3,000 to 5,000 of those 25,000 asylum seekers to come in New York in the coming months.

“Advocates, volunteers, service providers, immigrant rights activists, we’re all here and we’re focused on providing support and services,” said Camille Mackler, the founder of Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative or Immigrant ARC, a nonprofit organization working to increase access to lawyers for all immigrant New Yorkers.  

Mackler says they've come to the estimate of how many people will move to New York based on where the asylum seekers are saying they have family and friends, while taking into account past migration patterns.

Immigration lawyers agree the thousands of asylum-seekers coming here from the border pose logistical and humanitarian challenges.

"I think there’s going to be a need for coordination. I think there's going to be a need for social services," said Axford, who is vaiming to help provide services like that new New York family will receive in the months ahead.