>> Governor Hochul's message to migrants -- go somewhere else.

Mayor Adams' message to New Yorkers-- this could destroy our city.

The first of a special on a migrant crisis in New York that is straining resources, causing problems for officials, and driving angry protests across the city.

"MetroFocus" starts now.

♪ >> This is "MetroFocus," with Rafael Pi Roman, Jack Ford, and Jenna Flanagan.

MetroFocus is made possible by the Peter G Peterson fund.

Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation.

Barbara Hope Zuckerberg.

And by Jody and John Arnhold.

Bernard and Denise Schwartz.

Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn foundation.

The Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Estate of Roland Karlen.

>> Good evening and welcome to this special two-part MetroFocus.

I'm Jack Ford.

New York City has become overwhelmed by an influx of more than 100,000 migrants, with more arriving every day.

The city has taken extraordinary steps to try to house and assist these migrants, at the shelter system is maxed out, and the price tag has climbed into the billions.

Mayor Adams had stated publicly that if the state and federal governments do not start providing more financial assistance, the crisis could cost New Yorkers upwards of $12 billion, and could "destroy New York City."

the crisis is also impacting New Yorkers, any of whom are seeing migrants housed in their own neighborhoods.

Joining us for some perspective on the ongoing crisis and the impact on New York City and residents, are Stephon Kim, a reporter, a committee correspondent for deaf connected, pop singer Lady Gaga's father, who is an upper West side resident and business owner, and the director of a nonprofit organization team TLC NYC that assists migrants and asylum-seekers in New York.

Looking to all of you.

Thank you for joining us.

Have a lot to talk about here and have different perspectives from all of you that we are looking forward to.

Stephon, let me start with you for an overview to create the framework for our conversation, if we can.

Let's talk about this migrant crisis in New York City.

How did it start, and how did it evolve to what it is now?

>> Thank you for having me, Jack.

I think we all know how it started.

It started with blessing these migrants to Democratic sanctuary cities.

Disagree or agree on whether the tactic was a good way to go about it, but certainly the governor made his point.

I say that because if you look at what is happening in New York, what I found fascinating is that no matter what community, what neighborhood, no matter where these shelters go, across-the-board, whether it is a democratic neighborhood, Republican, black, brown, yellow, or white, unanimously for the most part, residence in New York don't want this in their backyard, and there are various reasons, but clearly the point has been made, so to speak, "not in my backyard," nimby.

Living on the border of Texas, he said it is your problem, and it became New York City's problem.

Jack: You have been reporting on this yourself, as Stephon has, for a long time.

We know that New York City has always embraced, at some level, migrants.

We have a history.

We always talk about "we are a nation of immigrants."

why is this different, do you think?

>> I think the number of migrants that have been arriving in the past two years -- people were not expecting it.

For the reasons we just mentioned, being bussed into our city, but also because social media exacerbated this idea that New York City has shelters.

When people consume the social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, they see that someone is going to welcome them, right?

It is also part of the pandemic.

Right after the pandemic, a lot of the country suffered.

But we see now is the result of that.

We are going to keep seeing that even as we move forward, because of so many other elements such as climate change, economic reasons, and persecution in other countries such as been as we look.

Jack: Joe, Nelson, let me bring you in for your perspectives as Presidents.

Joe, I will start with you if I could.

Give me an example of what you are seeing in your neighborhood with regard to the influx of migrants.

Joe: Well, the most significant thing is everything happened overnight.

There was no notification to the residence.

-- Presidents -- the residents.

It was a college dormitory and they moved all the college students out, and they brought new -- all new mattresses into the building.

And basically, they dropped 500 to 600 Venezuelan men into the location, and it was chaos overnight.

The partying started, the drugs, the alcohol, there were motorbikes everywhere in the street.

So it became a little chaotic, and quite frankly, all the neighbors in the neighborhood got together, and we started a block Association.

Jack: Let me come back to something that you mentioned.

From your perspective, there was no notice that this was going to be taking place in your neighborhood before it actually occurred?

Joe: Nothing formal.

We heard it from one of the old single room occupancy residents in that location.

We are quite friendly with him.

I have been up there 30 years and I have known him for 30 years.

He said, hey, Joe, I think we are all getting kicked out of here.

And migrants are coming in.

That is how we learned.

Jack: Joe, finish your thought.

Joe: It was quite disturbing, OK?

If we were able to prepare for it, they probably would have been an easier transition.

We were initially told it was going to be women and children.

Then it turned out to be Venezuelan men, 16 to 20 years old.

Now, as a result of what we have done, they moved all of the men out, and they brought in women and children.

There is significant difference.

Jack: Ilsa, let me come to you.

Tell us a little bit about the organization that you are working with here.

What it its function, its purpose has been.

>> Thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

I'm director of team TLC NYC.

Grannies respond is an organization that is nationwide that greets asylum-seekers on their way from detention to their sponsors, or to wherever else they are going to wind up.

Team TLC had been doing that for several years when suddenly we discovered we were going to be doing more than just greeting people and assisting them on the way, and we were basically in charge of taking care of hundreds of people who were arriving.

That is what we became.

Jack: Did this have the suddenness for you that Joe has described for us?

>> It really has.

We went from having just a few volunteers doing a little bit a week to literally having to find housing, transportation, food, clothing for hundreds of people, sometimes 500 people in a day.

It was partly because the governor of Texas planned it that way.

It was very much an ambush on his part for political reasons.

But also because the city has not been very good about its own communication.

It does not surprise me that Joe has had this experience in his neighborhood.

The communication has been very poor from the city government with respect to where they are going to be housing people and how they are going to be handling this crisis.

But I will disagree with something that was said earlier, that universally people don't want these folks in the city.

My experience in running this charity that serves these folks has been that the people of New York -- perhaps not the city government -- that the people of New York have been extremely welcoming, generous, kind, and very, very loving toward these people.

So I would take issue with that as a general matter.

Of course, there are NIMBY issues in people's neighborhoods.

As Joe has experienced, we were surprised by complete change in the neighborhood, and things need to be handled better in the city.

My experience is that the city has indeed been welcoming.

Jack: Let's talk about the city and how it is handling this.

Stephon, I'm going to come to you first on this.

We have seen Mayor Adams in the forefront, attempting to deal with this.

And we seem to have seen a bit of a change, if that is a fair characterization.

I will ask you all who have been covering this.

In terms of perhaps the substance of what he had been saying, that certainly the tone of what he has been saying -- Stefon, you first.

How have you seen Mayor Adams in terms of how he is dealing publicly with this situation?

Stefon: So just a follow-up on what Joe and Izzy said, they are not wrong.

The lack of communication is part of this, the suddenness.

In any neighborhood you go to, whether it is the residents, officials, Democrat, Republican -- they will tell you there is a lack of communication.

The city does not deny that.

They don't acknowledge it.

What the response tends to be this is a fluid situation.

These buses are coming without notice and we are doing the best that we can do.

Let's put that out there.

The city does not really deny that there is a lack of notification.

That said, this is a federal problem.

When you talk to immigration experts where you are independent of City Hall, they will say basically two things.

The city has done a pretty admirable job at scaffolding out and immigration system that at the federal level does not exist.

It is not easy to do, and it is extremely expensive, which is why the mayor has been saying we need more money.

But you can see how we sort of evolved, to answer the question, on his tone.

He went from April of last year to taking a hard turn toward the White House putting this at Joe Biden's doorstep.

As you so recently, he escalated those attacks, and it was Governor Hochul who brokered some sort of a deal with the White House to alleviate the problem.

The mayor has taken, as you can see, escalating his attacks against the White House, because this has become a city problem, and it should not have been to begin with.

Jack: Ramel, to you.

As you have been following this, following the mayor at the podium, talking about this and being out on the street, boots on the ground, if you will, were you surprised to hear him fairly recently say this could -- this crisis could destroy New York City?

Ramel: I think we saw it coming because this last year he has been hinting at this idea of having the right to shelter not apply to asylum-seekers that are out here.

And we saw with implementation, delegating congregate spaces, they do not meet the requirements for housing homeless people.

So we did see it coming.

Now, taking the right to shelter to court as well, we can see that shift very clear, that there is sort of a response against migrants coming here, because there is a lot of economic downfall that has happened in the past two years, right?

We sort of see this with the budget that he has predicted for the next two years being $2 billion.

One thing I would say is we need to question how this has been handled, because if we are handling $4 billion to companies and they are charging three times the amount they should be charging for services, then it really questions if we are operating in this emergency response.

We need to address that first before we can start putting this thing on the migrants and homeless people in general.

Jack: They are frightening numbers, but as you said, you can DN and find out what they mean.

I saw you both shaking your head, not a about that.

Stephan, to you again.

You did a story talking about the tensions between government officials.

Let's take a quick look.

>> Mayor Adams came out swinging in midseason form.

That was just round one.

Mayor Adams: I am just baffled around that very smart people believe that this is sustainable for New York City.

>> His first comments at a fireside chat at a New York Law School about Governor Hochul refusing to force other counties to take in asylum-seekers.

Later, at City Hall, cracks in the partnership apparently deepening, with the Department of 11 federal sites, many outside the city, to potentially house migrants.

This was Governor Hochul last week on housing migrants.

Governor Hotel: We signed an agreement that the city would provide shelter to anyone who seeks it.

This is an agreement that does not apply to the state's other 57 counties, which is one of the reasons we cannot and will not force other parts of our state to shelter migrants.

>> If the national leaders are saying we are not going to stop the flow, that is a fatal plan.

If the state leaders are saying it must stay in New York City, that is a fatal plan.

>> When asked if he would go against the governor and send migrants of state, the mayor made his intentions clear.

Mayor Adams: If we get permission from the federal government, we are going to use that.

We are going to use any space that is available to take pressure off of New York City residents.

>> A spokesperson for the governor says it is unfortunate the mayor is pointing a finger at the state, which continues to provide the city with unprecedented financial support, rather than working collaboratively to manage this crisis.

Channel seven eyewitness news.

Jack: This piece was actually a few weeks ago.

Are you seeing any changes in the tensions here, either ratcheted up or ratcheting down, since you posted that piece?

Stefon: After President Biden was in town for the U.N. General assembly, Tuesday night when he was in town, he met privately briefly with Governor Hochul.

It is important to know it was Governor Hochul who seems to have brokered this, because tensions were so high between City Hall and the White House.

But essentially the president granted one of the two or three things that the mayor has been pleading for, in fact.

The expedited work permit was one of those things.

He got that.

That is expected to alleviate quite a bit of burden on the shelter system, which was over flooded to begin with.

That is, to answer an earlier question, how we got here.

The shelter system was already flooded, and we throw it this on to it.

It is like throwing gasoline on a fire.

Hopefully, the thought is with 30 days, 60 days, this will start to alleviate that problem.

From a political standpoint, Mayor Adams sees this as "let's be real," an issue that could have delayed his reelection.

He has two years to recover from that.

He is thinking he has space to breathe here.

Jack: Joe, from your perspective, when you see all of this disagreement, even squabbling, whatever you call it, amongst the officials, what is your reaction to all of that?

What would you want to say to them if you had all of them in a room?

Joe: The first thing I would want to say to them is that they are spending money hand over fist, and giving away no-bid contracts.

I have seen one of them.

And they basically paid a location $1.8 million to get the state ready, and now they are paying them $600 a night per room.

In addition, the migrants in the location are getting free food every day, laundry service, medical staff on-site.

There is a social worker there, etc.

We still have some regular people that live out on the street that don't have access to this, right?

That is why the money is being -- it is being thrown away.

I think what they should do is, after this immediate crisis is over, they should get out short-term contracts.

They are handing out two-year contracts with these big, fat numbers.

If I was a hotel or a dormitory, I would grab it as fast as I could.

Jack: Ilsa, let me get your reaction to this.

Doing what you are doing, the good work to try to help get through this -- I'm sure you see people who are thanking you, and I'm sure you see people who are saying "why are we doing this at all in the city?"

There are people working every day who don't have the life -- this is the argument that is made -- that don't have life as good-quality as many of the migrants may be getting.

The question is, what do you say to other New York City residents who are troubled by that?

Ilsa: Yes, I think there has been perhaps an intentional effort to so some discord between the asylum-seekers and ordinary New Yorkers.

And indeed, ordinary on Houston New Yorkers.

There has been an effort to pit these people against each other, and there is some misinformation out there about what exactly the migrants are receiving from these very, -- these very fat contracts that for-profit companies are receiving with no oversight.

What we have seen and heard from the migrants that we assist is that what is going on inside these shelters and inside these hotels, and inside what are called humanitarian emergency resource and response centers, HERRCs, is very different than what is being pulled to the public.

Yes, for-profit companies are making a lot of money from these people.

But what they are getting is oftentimes very, very different from what one would hope to receive for that kind of price tag.

These companies, there is a $432 million no-bid contract that was given to a company called dot go that is completely unqualified to house and feed asylum-seekers.

It was created as a vaccination company during COVID.

It was handed this lucrative contract that some say the company expects to gain $300 million in profit.

If they are profiting that much from a contract, you can be sure that what people are receiving on the other end, the migrants who are receiving this supposedly Jess, is not what anyone would want to receive, or see people in need to receive.

The hotels that people have put up in Buffalo and upstate -- it is a disgrace.

I've seen photos of the meals these people are receiving.

They are a pittance.

So unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation out there that is pitting ordinary New Yorkers against this population.

Jack: Not surprising this is a complex and nuanced issue.

Stephan, let me bring you to another story you did, because it gets us to this conversation about shelters.

You took a look at Staten Island , at some of the temporary shelters that were being put up there.

Stick a quick look at this.

>> do you sleep at night when little kids are getting raped and you allowed it?

>> not here.

Not anywhere.

Get lost.

>> Where is the children?

>> You are not welcome.

Stefon: As buses arrived in this conservative residential neighborhood on Staten Island, protesters unloaded their fury.

Their simmering anger even aimed at the NYPD.

>> I hope it shows up in your neighborhood.

>> Nobody stands when NYPD goes by.

You know why.

Stefon: Dozens of asylum-seekers were bussed here.

Thousands started protesting overnight.

Three of them arrested for obstructing governmental administration.

>> Common sense, decency, and what this country should be all about.

Stefon: Hours after migrants arrived, a judge rented a temporary restraining order, blocking the city, only to be reduced -- reversed hours later.

The mayor's office says it empathizes with residents and is reminding them it is a role problem that can only be solved by Washington.

The city says it is out of options.

>> We are Christians, Americans, patriots.

We have compassion for these migrants.

We love people.

We just want to make sure our children are safe.

Stefon: The plan is to Hyo -- to house women and families, no single men.

20 left because they said they felt unsafe after being heckled and jeered.

In Staten Island, Stephan Kim, eyewitness news.

Jack: After doing that story, what did you learn that maybe you did not know going into that story?

Stefon: The talk about the former Catholic school on Staten Island, right?

The first thing is, that Catholic school, it was supposed to be women and children.

The numbers were not extraordinarily large.

I think in the beginning, it was a couple dozen were bussed in.

You saw the opposition protests, some of the language being used.

You might see this characterized differently from different neighborhoods, but it is sort of the same feeling.

I don't mean to broadly mischaracterize all neighborhoods.

Talking about these neighborhoods in the outer boroughs, we are, you can go to Coney Island, where this happened.

Black and brown neighborhoods, they raised that we are having our own issues.

It is sort of the same -- different motivation, at the same result.

Take care of us first.

In Staten Island, you hear Americans first.

It is different language, but the same sentiment, is what I am trying to hit at.

Right around that time, we saw the mayor, in fairness, try to do things to discourage the flow.

The migrants are choosing New York City for a reason.

They are not choosing to go to California.

New York City has this decades old right to shelter law, which may be being misinterpreted.

The city of New York did go before a judge to try to change that definition.

It was never meant to handle a crisis where you have a million people coming from the border.

Some would argue maybe not.

He has also have the time they can stay in the shelters or single adult men, and women and children have an indefinite stay, something he is considering shortening as well.

Right after that protest erupted on Staten Island, which you can describe how you will, there was a couple of things the administration did to try to discourage migrants from choosing New York to begin with.

Jack: One of the things that we have seen is one of the efforts, and Ramel, jump in on this.

We have seen that New York City -- this is consistent with what Stefon just said to us.

They are getting flyers around the border, saying to people down there "don't come to New York.

It is not affordable.

It may not be the place you want to be."

are you surprised the city is taking that step?

Ramel: no, because the tone of the past year and a half has been discouraging people from coming here.

Regardless of what happens, regardless of what gets input, New York City has been this city that has always been welcoming to migrants.

People will come here regardless of what the circumstances are.

When I say that it is right to put flyers on the border?

Probably not.

I think if anything we need to start prioritizing, making sure that we have this path from temporary housing to sustainable housing.

As we mentioned before, the shelter system was already overcrowded.

Right now, we have 57,000 people that are not migrants and that are in shelters.

It keeps increasing, and it is because we do not have the structure of helping them leave the shelter system in the first place.

Jack: Tune in tomorrow night as we cover the community outrage and communing protests erecting outside shelters as cameras take us inside one of the facilities for a look at the conditions.

>> MetroFocus is made possible by the Peter B Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation Bernard and Denise Schwartz Barbara Hope Zuckerberg And by Jody and John Arnold Bernard and Denise Schwartz.

The Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Estate of Roland Karlen ♪