Transcript: Commissioner Manuel Castro, Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, Appears on NY1's "Inside City Hall"

December 4, 2023

Errol Louis: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. With temperatures plunging and no end in sight to an influx of migrants, city officials and advocates say that conditions could get much worse for our newcomers. More than 66,000 migrants currently reside in New York City shelters and that number includes families with children, many of whom face the end of their 60-day shelter limit shortly after Christmas.

Meanwhile, border crossings are increasing dramatically, especially in Arizona, where border patrol agents made 17,500 arrests at a Tucson border crossing over the last week. Joining me now to talk about what comes next is a special panel.
Manuel Castro is the commissioner for the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs. Beatriz Ponce de León is the deputy mayor of Immigrant, Migrant and Refugee Rights for the City of Chicago, the first person to hold that title. And Matt Griffith is the interim executive director of the Office of Immigrant Affairs for San Diego. Thank you all for being here. Very nice to meet all of you.

Commissioner, how did this come about? How did we get to the point where you're meeting with your counterparts around the country to figure this out?

Commissioner Manuel Castro, Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs: Well, Errol, we're very excited to have Mayor Offices of Immigrant Affairs from around the country. We have, of course, Chicago, San Diego, but also Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, you name it.

We're all coming together because, listen, we do not have the luxury to wait for support. We have to support the tens of thousands of people that are arriving into our city with a lot of needs. And we also don't have the luxury not to speak up. All of our cities need support, those who are transit cities and those who are receiving cities.

And we've been in conversation throughout this humanitarian crisis. I'm just glad that we're working together and coming together to come up with solutions and in one voice ask the federal government, it's time for them to step up and do more.

Louis: And deputy mayor, tell us about the situation in Chicago. How many migrants have come there and what are the main challenges you have in meeting the needs?

Chicago Deputy Mayor Beatriz Ponce de León, Immigrant, Migrant and Refugee Rights: Yes, thank you. So, we started receiving new arrivals in August of 2022. And since then, in partnership with the state and the county, we've really welcomed almost 23,000 new arrivals from the southern border. Of those, we currently have 13,000 people residing in our city, temporary shelters, 26 shelters are in operation, and we've seen highs and lows in terms of the numbers of folks arriving both by bus as well as from San Antonio, primarily on flights, and then from other parts of the country as well.

And I would agree that this is an unprecedented challenge for cities. It is really the responsibility of the federal government to coordinate resettlement at such a large scale, but we are doing our best to welcome people humanely and to provide them with some resources that they need to resettle and become self-sufficient

Louis: In the initial wave of migrants who came, I remember reading in the Chicago newspapers that they were staying at police precincts. Has that continued as the first stop for a lot of migrants.

Chicago Deputy Mayor Ponce de León: Yeah, it wasn't like that at the beginning, but as soon as our shelters really were at capacity and we were opening them, almost one shelter per week since this administration took over in May of this year. People began staying at our police stations earlier. We are right now in the middle of working to move everyone out of police stations into shelter, doing that primarily with city shelters. But there have been some faith communities that have stepped up and taken in some migrants.

We're about halfway through being able to retire police stations for that purpose. And we know that we need to do that before winter really hits. And so doing everything possible to get people indoors.

Louis: Okay. And Matt Griffith, winters in San Diego are not quite as bad as in Chicago or New York, obviously, but I was looking at some of the numbers and it was eye popping to me. You're from the city of San Diego, which is 1.3 million. For our New York viewers, that's roughly the size of the Bronx. How many migrants have come to San Diego?

Matt Griffith, Interim Executive Director, San Diego Office of Immigrant Affairs: So, as far as September till now, over 200,000 have come through. But as the commissioner was saying, we're not a final destination city. So, we are, because we are the largest border town in the nation, pretty much a transit where we have individuals who are coming to then lead to final destinations. But those destinations happen to be New York, Chicago, Denver, Seattle.

And with that, again, we're seeing still a large amount just within this past month, over 20,000. And of those, over 75 percent are coming from non Mexico. So again, we're seeing a large representation of countries around the world that are being represented.

Louis: And what's the policy of the city? Are you trying to find a bed for every single person, or are you just trying to conduct them to the first bus that's going to leave town?

Griffith: So, we have a great relationship with the county, and the county is the lead agency as it relates to our response. What we're so happy that the county supervisors have allotted $3 million of ARPA funds to go and assist our community-based organizations, our NGOs, who are assisting with providing either shelter along with next destination stops.

So, again, the city, we're making sure that we provide the county with any and all support as they're the lead agency. And like I said, we're thankful that the board of supervisors have voted to provide $3 million. There's actually another vote to secure an additional $3 million that we hope will pass and then provide again, extended services to our CBOs and NGOs who are providing those needed services.

Louis: So, now Commissioner Castro, when you first were going down to Washington to plead New York City's case, I take it, you were essentially going alone or with other teammates from City Hall. You've been coming back in numbers. Are you getting a different response down there?

Commissioner Castro: Listen, whatever the federal government's doing, whatever their strategy currently is, it's not working. And so I'm glad that we are all coming together as cities, because we cannot do this alone. New York City cannot advocate alone. And I think that the White House and Congress must listen to our cities.

We're really the backbone of this country. And clearly they've allowed this to snowball and what we're seeing in York, we can easily see throughout the country. I think other cities are paying attention, those who've been impacted by this. Clearly, we all want a solution, a humane solution for the migrants that are arriving and also something that doesn't impact, doesn't impact our cities the way it has been doing.

But look, Mayor's Offices of Immigrant Affairs, we were established to look after the wellbeing of immigrant communities. So, all of us here, we want the best for immigrants, but also our cities. And we've been advocating for comprehensive immigration reform for a very long time. So, it's not just the asylum seekers arriving, but also those long-term immigrants. So, again, we're expecting quite a lot from this White House in this Congress. Whatever they're doing now is not working though.

Louis: Is there a plan, say in San Diego, that's analogous to what I think is probably going to be the end game in New York, which is finding a way to help people get resettled. We have a big state. You're part of a big state. We have very sparsely populated areas, mostly upstate where there are some towns that could really use an influx. We've got, I think the estimate I heard from the governor the other day was upwards of 15,000 jobs that are open and available and waiting for people if we can just figure out how to do it. Is there a similar kind of longer, say, medium term plan for San Diego?

Griffith: Well, I think the main plan is to connect individuals to family and making sure that their final destinations are being met, whether that be in San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco or even outside of the state. But I really just want to echo what the commissioner is saying.

The plan is for Congress and the federal government to really step up and provide the support. I think once that occurs, then we'll be able to understand and see where we can develop these plans and see how if we can connect these new arrivals to new jobs, especially in the City of San Diego. We just recently had our first refugee job fair just for our open vacancies within the city because we saw that there was already a need just within our city.

We're hoping that other cities can model that because there's open vacancies throughout and we know that connecting individuals to jobs, housing will help curtail this crisis. But again, we need the federal government to step up and provide us with assistance.

Louis: I see that your title includes immigrant, migrant and refugee rights. Do you make distinctions between those categories or is this all kind of just one big question that falls into your desk?

Chicago Deputy Mayor Ponce de León: We intentionally chose those three words because migrants are transitory and we know that Chicago is a resettlement city. We've been a city of immigrants throughout our history and so we wanted to make sure that we captured immigrants, migrants and then those arriving with refugee status or seeking refugee status. I think that it is also pointing towards our vision as a city, as a welcoming city, a sanctuary city, to really do our best to integrate immigrants, refugees and migrants into the fabric of what Chicago is about.

And I'm proud that Illinois and Chicago have been able to piece together a resettlement strategy that includes housing support so that people can move out of shelter into their own apartments as well as legal services to make sure that they get the status, the supports for their immigration status. And then even more longer term, we are now working very closely to connect them to job opportunities and workforce development.

And this has been accelerated by our advocacy at the federal level with the Department of Homeland Security and the White House to ensure that they at least are able to provide on-the-ground assistance and doing large scale clinics for TPS so that people get their TPS status in order, their work authorizations and are able to move through our shelter system more quickly and then resettle whether it's in the area or somewhere beyond that.

But again, saying that the federal government needs to do their part. In reality, they should be coordinating this resettlement process. This is not something that cities have the infrastructure to do and we are all struggling to do it, but trying to meet that goal. And for us in Chicago in particular, we see this as an opportunity. So it is an opportunity to, over time, resettle a large number of folks just like we have historically. Bring them into our communities and into… Part of being productive citizens of our city.

Commissioner Castro: [Inaudible.]

Louis: Very quick.

Commissioner Castro: Mayor Adams has been a leader on these issues from the beginning. And because it's easy for the federal government to frankly ignore our calls for support, we need to continue this drumbeat. And so that's what the mayor has been doing from the beginning, our trip to the border trip to Latin America. We're very proud to be working in coalition to continue to highlight these issues and make sure that the federal government, not only does its part, but also take responsibility for what should be on their plate.

Louis: Okay. We're going to leave it there for now. I wish you all the best of luck. Thank you all so much. Don't be a stranger. Come back and share whatever you can find out that might help New York. And it is always good to see you, commissioner, as well.

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