The cups of feces and urine that The New York Post reported were littering Tompkins Square Park were nowhere to be found this week. However, illegal immigrants from Africa continue to gather there for news about housing and their citizenship status.
Some played soccer to stay warm in the 25-degree weather while others sat on benches watching or stood talking in the cold.
For now, they are all unemployed noncitizens but Mamadou Deya, originally from Senegal, hopes to work in construction once he’s legalized. The 26-year-old man left West Africa with a group of friends because of brewing turmoil he feared would land him in prison without good reason.
When he arrived in Texas, Mr. Deya opted to pay for a flight to New York, which separated him from his acquaintances. He has his cell phone, but it doesn’t work because he’s out of cash.
Mr. Deya, who has been in New York for six weeks, is among the hundreds of illegal immigrants who line up outside the intake center that was once St. Brigid’s School on East 7th Street in lower Manhattan. The 10.5-acre city park is across the street from the intake center and Mr. Deya travels there by subway every morning from a shelter in the Bronx.
Mr. Deya also told The Epoch Times in his native French language that he has no choice but to withhold bowel movements during the day unless the intake center allows him to use their toilet.
“Sometimes they do,” he said. “Once you walk out the door though, it’s hard to get back in.”
Workers at the intake center slammed the door when The Epoch Times requested an interview while allowing others entry.
New York City Councilman Bob Holden (D-District 30) foresees this year’s federal election as a turning point for illegal immigrants.
“If Democrats totally take over both Houses and Biden wins reelection, I’m sure they'll pass some kind of law to fast track a lot of these people, which means, in essence, they would be able to vote eventually,” Mr. Holden told The Epoch Times.
At least 165,000 illegal immigrants have registered for a city service, such as housing, over the past year and a half, according to Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute.
The projected cost of accommodating them is $4 billion a year.
“This is more than what we spend on the fire department, more than what we spend on the parks department, more than what we spend on the corrections department, and it’s not something that is in any way sustainable,” she said.
The illegal immigrants arrive at the East Village intake center daily because it’s a familiar place and it’s where they receive colored wristbands that entitle them to a bed in a shelter in one of the five boroughs.
“If they refuse to allow me in to use the toilet, I use the bathroom that’s in the subway,” said Alasan Deall, a student who left Guinea in a boat and upon arriving in Nicaragua, walked to Mexico until he reached Arizona.
Mr. Deall, 21, chose to travel further to New York City because he thought it would be easier to secure citizenship in the Big Apple.
“I come here every day and leave at 7 p.m. to go back to the shelter in Brooklyn,” he said in French. “They let us in to sleep at 8 p.m.”
The shelters reportedly close after a night’s sleep at 6 am and Mr. Deall is forced to leave along with everyone else. He heads for the St. Brigid intake center and ends up in the park where charitable organizations drop off scarves, gloves, and socks as well as bagged lunches.
“I hope they have some information about what’s happening next,” Mr. Deall told The Epoch Times.
A neighbor volunteering with Friends of Tompkins Square Park (TSP), who would only identify herself as Catherine, was onsite picking up litter that landed on a nearby flower bed where the organization had planted seeds.
“They are decent people who discard their trash, but they have to be directed and they don’t speak English,” she told The Epoch Times. “Even though they have a language barrier that makes their situation harder, they were helping at our clean-up on Saturday.”
The retired physician added that she is picking up where the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), also referred to as NYC Parks, allegedly left off when it comes to litter.
“A lot of the neighbors testified at the city council because they cut 1,400 maintenance jobs from the parks in all five boroughs,” she said. “Parks don’t run themselves.”
The next formal Tompkins Park clean-up, hosted by Friends of TSP, is Saturday, Feb. 3 from 10 a.m. to noon.
Mr. Holden isn’t surprised that neighbors, illegal immigrants, and volunteers are reportedly cleaning up the park instead of park staff.
“We never have enough parks workers,” Mr. Holden said. “We never have enough people cleaning the streets. We never have enough cops. We don’t have enough correction officers. There’s this vicious cycle and with the migrant situation, it’s going to get worse.”
When asked about The New York Post report that illegal immigrants are allegedly defecating and urinating in paper cups and leaving them in the park and on residents’ doorsteps, Catherine explained that city workers should have cleaned three soiled portable toilets instead of removing them from the premises.
“They are trying to be decent,” she said. “What would you do … where would you go to the bathroom?”
The portable toilets were removed because they are frequently targeted by vandals, according to a DPR press officer. The department recently received $5.6 million in mayoral funding to renovate the Tompkins Square Park field house, including existing restrooms.
The improvements are slated for completion in September.
Until then, the nearest DPR-operated public restroom facility is McKinley Playground at East 3rd Street and Avenue A, a 3-minute walk from Tompkins Square Park.
Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) blames President Joe Biden.
“Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, called for the president to take action months ago and Biden ignored it,” Mr. Molinaro told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Adams’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Like Mr. Molinaro, Mr. Holden blames President Biden for the current state of the illegal immigrant crisis.
In July 2023, for example, the federal government began allowing illegal immigrants to obtain U.S. work permits if they have relatives who are citizens of the United States or green card holders.
“We heard that Biden is going to bail out New York City if he’s reelected in November so he’s holding funding over a lot of Democrat-run states and cities,” Mr. Holden said. “We have a porous border, but you'll never hear my colleagues criticize the president.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Maliquet Sobaguy arrived at the Roosevelt Hotel on East 45 Street in Manhattan after a flight from California.
Originally from Burkina Faso, the 24-year-old said his New Yorker uncle told him to report to the mid-priced Manhattan Marquis Hotel for shelter.
“Handing over thousands of rooms for migrants is not a very good strategy for recovering the tourism industry and tens of thousands of jobs that are still missing from the tourism industry,” Ms. Gelinas said.
Instead of allowing Mr. Sobaguy to enter the hotel, a bouncer-like doorman directed him to Vander Bar around the corner.
Outside the former bar restaurant, two men reviewed the native French speaker’s documents along with other single men who were waiting in line.
“We have French translators,” one of the burly men said before allowing Mr. Sobaguy to disappear behind the blacked-out glass door.
Leading up to the pandemic in 2020, the city could count on 65 million visitors compared to just 50 million in 2023.
“We’re not back in any regard,” Mr. Holden added. “There’s several businesses that are still not open in Manhattan.”
The Roosevelt Hotel’s curb is cluttered with a long row of mopeds, which Ms. Gelinas alleges illegal immigrants are unlawfully driving.
The eyesore could potentially impact tourism as well because the Roosevelt Hotel is close to Grand Central Terminal and the JP Morgan Chase building.
Mr. Holden would like to see his colleagues on the city council call on either President Biden or Congress to secure the southern border, but he has no confidence they will do that.
“They welcome the migrants, but they never discuss how to pay for it and then once their budgets are cut in their districts, they start to scream,” he said. “This is how misguided these younger council members are. You have to turn off the flow of migrants coming into the city.”
Council members would do better calling on the U.S. Senate to address the border security crisis, according to Mr. Molinaro because the U.S. House of Representatives has already done what it can.
“We have voted now three times,” Mr. Molinaro told The Epoch Times. “We adopted the strongest border security policy in generations. It’s the Senate and President Biden who have failed to act. The law provides the president with the tools to secure the border, but he’s chosen not to and now we are facing as many as 12 million individuals indiscriminately crossing the border.”
