City Hall abruptly ceased sending out detailed counts on New York City’s migrant population in the weeks leading up to reporting a skyrocketing rise in the number of new arrivals, according to two elected officials.
City Comptroller Brad Lander told Gothamist his office had been among the elected officials receiving regular reports on the exact number of migrants in both the city’s shelter system and emergency facilities created to address the crisis. But the comptroller hasn’t gotten a detailed report from the Adams administration since May 3, a week before Title 42 — the pandemic-era border policy — expired, according to Lander’s office.
Since then, updates on the migrant numbers from City Hall have only provided a rounded estimate of how many asylum seekers are currently in the city’s care, according to Lander, who’s job is to scrutinize the city budget and make fiscal projections.
He called the omission “really unacceptable.”
“The numbers are necessary for budget projections and as a basic matter of public trust,” he said.
Lander, who has been critical of the mayor’s handling of the crisis, added that his office had asked City Hall why the information was no longer being shared but had not received an answer.
The withholding of more granular and precise information comes amid scrutiny over the reporting and accuracy of the city’s data on migrants. It also raises questions over how Mayor Eric Adams has managed the crisis, which is being overseen by at least three city agencies.
City Councilmember Shahana Hanif, who chairs the council’s immigration committee, also attested to the change in the updates.
“As this crisis has continued, we have received less and less information from the mayor,” Hanif said in a statement. “We know hundreds of city employees are working round the clock to serve asylum seekers, but we can’t help unless we know what’s going on.
Kate Smart, a City Hall spokesperson, did not say why the reporting had changed in recent weeks.
Instead, she noted that the city provides data to “elected officials, advocates and stakeholders twice each week to provide a clear picture of the current situation, in addition to the extensive data available daily on OpenData.”
OpenData refers to the city’s public data repository. A check of the site found daily census and demographic data for the Department of Homeless Services, which does not include migrants staying outside the shelter system.
“We maintain open lines of communication with everyone as we continue to manage this crisis,” Smart added.
The mayor frequently uses the migrant estimates — which officials say will cost the city billions of dollars — to communicate the urgency and scale of the crisis, as well as to make the case for more state and federal assistance.
Adams has also cited the growing migrant population to justify some controversial decisions, namely budget cuts and attempts to weaken a decades-old measure that requires the city to provide shelter to anyone in need.
Saying that the city is running out of room to house migrants, Adams also sent new arrivals to the city’s northern suburbs, renting rooms in hotels for them to stay, much to the ire of local elected officials who say they’re being blindsided.
The influx of new migrants is also posing new data collection and reporting challenges for city officials. As a sanctuary city, shelter officials did not previously track immigration status due to concerns that information could be obtained by federal immigration authorities and weaponized.
It was not until August, when they began noticing an uptick in new arrivals, that they introduced an “asylum seeker” category into the city’s shelter system database, according to the Department of Social Services.
Part of the challenge in reporting accurate numbers also stems from the number of other city agencies now involved in providing shelter and services to migrants.
The city’s public hospital network manages eight of the nine emergency shelter sites housing migrants, also known as “Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers,” while the other is managed by the department of housing preservation and development. The city’s department of emergency management, meanwhile, is in charge of so-called respite centers that are intended to serve as temporary shelters.
The city’s shelter system is run by the Department of Homeless Services.
Experts say that having accurate and detailed information on the new arrivals is critical to understanding the population and deploying the right resources.
At a City Council hearing on Tuesday, Jacques Jiha, the city’s budget director, said the city has counted more than 73,000 migrants as having entered the shelter system at some point.
Of that number, currently 44,000 migrants are still in the city’s care, according to Jiha.
But last week, some advocates told the Daily News they were seeing fewer people coming through the various ports of entry, which include the Port Authority bus terminal, as well as local airports. At the U.S.-Mexico border, migrant crossings surged in the days leading up to the end of Title 42 but dropped by half the day afterwards, according to federal officials.
Adams denounced suggestions that the city is reporting inaccurate or inflated numbers, calling it “counterproductive” and “hurting” the city’s fight to secure federal aid.
Joshua Goldfein, a staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society, said he has repeatedly asked the city to provide more frequent and detailed data on the migrant population. Goldfein said he is specifically interested in knowing the daily number of people entering and leaving the shelter system.
“That tells us what’s going on in the system,” he said. “It would be helpful to know who in the population is leaving and who isn’t because then the city can try to help those who have somewhere else to go find a way to get there.”
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