New York City is expanding curfews for immigrants living in 25 shelters across the city after an uptick in crime and violence attributed to asylum-seekers that has gained nationwide attention from federal and state lawmakers.
The curfew in the city will now be from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. in 20 shelters across New York beginning Monday after initially being put in place at four shelters. The curfew hours will affect roughly 3,600 immigrants, Kayla Mamelak, a spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, told the Associated Press. The 24 shelters represent just a fraction of the more than 200 facilities being used to house the nearly 66,000 newly arrived immigrants in recent months.
“New York City continues to lead the nation in managing this national humanitarian crisis, and that includes prioritizing the health and safety of both asylum seekers in our care and New Yorkers who live in the communities surrounding the emergency shelters we manage,” Mamelak said in a statement.
One of the largest shelters affected is located in Long Island City in Queens, which houses nearly 1,000 immigrants. City officials placed a curfew on the four initial shelters, including Long Island City, last month in response to complaints from neighborhood residents, according to the Associated Press.
Mamelak said the curfews fall in line with the restrictions in place at New York City’s traditional homeless shelters and allow for the “more efficient capacity management” of immigrants who have arrived in the city since 2022.
The curfews come after a series of criminal incidents that have resulted in New Yorkers being robbed and tourists being injured. The New York Police Department arrested 15-year-old Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa on Friday, who was the suspect in a shooting that injured a tourist. He is being tried as an adult and faces two counts of attempted murder, as well as assault and criminal possession of a weapon charges, according to court documents via NBC News.
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A grand jury in Manhattan recently indicted seven immigrants accused of assaulting two NYPD officers, which went viral last month and called significant attention to the growing immigrant crisis in New York City. Five of the immigrants face felony charges.
Several immigrants were arrested in the last few weeks in connection to a citywide cellphone crime spree after officers raided an apartment that was serving as a headquarters to store the stolen phones taken from women off the street in New York.
