Resources for Recently Arrived Asylum Seekers in NYC

The city estimates that around 7,600 asylum seekers have arrived via buses from the border in recent months. Many don’t know where to find food, clothing, and other services that are available, so City Limits has prepared this resource guide to help them navigate the city after talking to dozens of them.

Thousands of asylum seekers from the southern border have arrived in New York City over the last few months, including in publicly announced buses from Texas. Of the 7,600 who’ve come so far, around 5,700 have entered the city’s shelter system as they await a determination in their immigration cases, according to the latest numbers shared by officials.

Many of these newest New Yorkers told City Limits they are struggling to navigate the city and don’t know where to find help to access basic necessities such as food, clothing, and school supplies for those with children. “It’s so complicated,” one woman from Colombia recently told City Limits. “And it’s all in English.”

While the city recently launched a multi-agency plan to aid this population, particularly with the school enrollment process, it has likewise struggled to keep up with the influx of new residents, which Mayor Eric Adams called a “herculean task.” As a result, many of their needs are being met by volunteers, community-based organizations, and mutual aid groups who have been organizing on the ground to supply migrant families with clothing, meals, transportation and other resources.

“This is a humanitarian disaster and people do not survive this alone. We survive in community, that’s what we do,” said Sergio Tupac Uzurin of NYC ICE Watch, one of the groups that’s been aiding migrants as they arrive at the Port Authority, keeping tabs on many of them as they enter shelter and providing information and other help as needed.

The immigration system is “designed to create confusion” Uzurin said, adding that the most pressing needs they’ve encountered so far include “water, food, clothes, and legal services.

Grannies Respond is a national organization that assists refugees, asylum seekers and other immigrants with a “huge network of helpers,” including their New York City volunteers, dubbed TEAM TLC (Tender, Love, and Care). The group too goes to the Port Authority bus station to greet new asylum seekers, setting up a table to provide food, water and other goods, escorting people to the bathrooms or using some of their funding to take them shopping for necessities.