New York City has long been a city of immigrants living up to the words on the Statue of Liberty in the city's harbor.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Alone among major U.S. cities, New York has a legal obligation to offer shelter to everyone who wants it.

But the current influx of migrants and asylum seekers is putting that to the test.

They came from around the world making often dangerous journeys to a city they hoped would offer them better lives.

What they found is a city whose migrant crisis is at a breaking point and Intake Center at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan has been filled overflowing.

Many have been sleeping shoulder to shoulder on concrete sidewalks.

Mayor Eric Adams has called for federal assistance.

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS, New York City: We need help.

We need we need help and it's not going to get any better.

We put buses there too for cooling systems.

But it's just not sustainable.

JOHN YANG: City officials say the shelter system has been overwhelmed by the nearly 100,000 migrants and asylum seekers who have arrived in New York since spring 2022.

Further complicating things, Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas have been sending thousands of migrants to New York City and other so called sanctuary cities.

In addition to financial help, Adams is asking the federal government to expedite work permits.

But some advocates say a longer term solution is needed.

MURAD AWAWDEH, Executive Director, New York Immigration Coalition: We need to actually stop doubling and tripling down on broken systems like our emergency shelter system and actually invest in getting people out of emergency shelter and into permanent housing.

JOHN YANG: New York's guarantee of housing is the result of a lawsuit from the Legal Aid Society more than 40 years ago.

This week, Legal Aid threatened to take the city back to court.

Jasmine Garza is a New York based correspondent for NPR, her work is focused on immigrant communities.

Jasmine, we've seen pictures.

We're able to show pictures of what a television camera can see.

But it can't see everything you've been there.

You've been to the centers.

You've been to the sidewalks around these centers.

What have you seen what have people told you down there?

JASMINE GARSD, NPR: What we've seen is that the shelter system is overwhelmed and fed they're at capacity when I was at the Roosevelt Hotel, which served as Intake Center.

There were people who were sleeping outside had been sleeping outside for four, five, six days during a heatwave.

And they were just waiting for intake.

JOHN YANG: Is this just an issue of volume?

Or is there another problem going on here?

JASMINE GARSD: Well, New York City is undergoing a housing crisis.

That's one problem compounding with another.

I have been quite a bit of time with homeless encampments of migrants and asylum seekers, many of whom told me they do not want to be inside of those shelters, that the overcrowding, the food that sometimes is in bad condition and gets people sick.

I've heard widespread accounts of 80 or 90 people having to share one or two bathroom.

It is really, really a bad situation for migrants and asylum seekers here in the States.

JOHN YANG: You spoken to asylum seekers and migrants there.

How many of them said that they intended to go to New York from the beginning and how many just ended up there by other means?

JASMINE GARSD: Absolutely nobody that I have spoken to chose New York City.

Everyone I've spoken to told me I did got bused here.

You know, one of the new policies that Mayor Eric Adams has announced is to hand out flyers that the border, urging people to find somewhere else to go that isn't New York, it's unusual.

However, every single person that I have spoken to had no idea that New York was at capacity, that the situation in the shelters was as it is, and that they wouldn't be having to wait on the street for days on end.

JOHN YANG: You said a lot of these people were most of all the people you talk to just got bused to New York, and now New York is busing them upstate, where are they ending up and what conditions are they seeing with that when they get there?

JASMINE GARSD: Yeah, people have been bused to areas of state that are in places like Yonkers and Albany have said this is a lot for us to handle, but we will do it.

And then the other areas of state that have really bulked.

I mean, there's even been lawsuits, there has been restraining orders.

There's parts of upstate New York that have told the city you are a sanctuary city.

We are not.

We do not want people here and that has caused a lot of concern among activists and advocate.

JOHN YANG: I know you went down to the border on a reporting trip, is there any connection between what you saw at the border and what you're seeing in New York City?

JASMINE GARSD: Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, the Biden administration has had a policy of determine, saying, you know, do not just cross the border and expect to get asylum.

If we catch you crossing the border without papers, you will be deported in an expedited way, and there will be a harsher punishment.

And it's also encouraged people to use the CBP One app, in other words to apply for asylum online.

I met so many migrants that their daily routine is basically wake up at 6:00 a.m. and try to get on that CBP One app so that they can do the asylum process.

I did also meet people that were completely deaf for it.

And they didn't want to wait in Mexico because their lives were in danger because they had suffered exploitation or abuse or harassment or worse in Mexico.

And they were just going to go for it and cross because they felt that their lives were in danger.

JOHN YANG: Jasmine Garsd of NPR.

Thank you very much.

JASMINE GARSD: Thank you.