Roughly 400 New Yorkers protested a migrant shelter at a closed school in Staten Island Monday evening, according to the New York Post.
Bearing a large tarp reading “NO F%*KIN WAY!” the protestors expressed their disagreements with a 300-bed shelter in former St. John Villa Academy, according to the NYP. The state of New York has cared for roughly 100,000 migrants.
“It’s a clusterf–k,” a resident told the NYP. “The city really screwed it up. Before we even talk about whether I want migrants here or not, the way it was handled was terrible.”
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“It was done in a cloud of secrecy,” the resident added.
A similar protest took place over the shelter Thursday into early Friday.
“The message is that here in Staten Island, we love immigrants,” John Tobacco, one of the Monday rally’s organizers, told the NYP. “We’re the most Italian-American congressional district in the country, and all our ancestors came here legally. We love anyone who comes here legally.”
“This isn’t our problem,” he said. “I think people are fed up. We want answers from people that we voted for.”
Due to the influx of migrants and lack of shelter space, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has asked the Biden administration for expedited work permits, additional funds to help migrants go to school, help erecting more shelters, reimbursements for deploying the National Guard and payment for future costs of the deployments.
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The Biden administration responded Monday, saying there’s more the Hochul and Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams can do, including improving data collection, communication with the migrants and bettering information provided about the work authorization process and the need to apply for asylum.
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