Migrant families rally for end to New York’s new 60-day limits on shelter stays

Migrant families and their advocates marched outside New York City Hall on Tuesday to demand Mayor Eric Adams end his plan to limit the number of days newly arrived immigrants can remain in city-run shelters.

The late afternoon demonstration of students and parents at City Hall Park was in response to an order Adams issued in October limiting homeless migrants and their children to 60 days in city housing. The Democrat said the move was necessary to relieve a shelter system overwhelmed by asylum-seekers crossing the southern U.S. border.

Liza Schwartzwald, a director at the New York Immigration Coalition, one of the groups that organized Tuesday’s rally, said the time limits only serve to uproot families who have already made the dangerous journey across the border after fleeing poverty and crime in their homelands.

“There’s no excuse to retraumatize these families,” she said.