Migrants are cleared from sidewalk outside $450-a-night Manhattan hotel in late-night stand off

A migrant at the makeshift Brooklyn shelter has slammed those who set up an encampment outside a swanky Manhattan hotel because their behavior ‘makes us all look bad’.

Woke activist attempts to force The Watson Hotel to house hordes of single male migrants failed overnight as the frenzied scene was cleared out to Brooklyn. 

The tense days-long stalemate between police and left-wing agitators who demanded migrants be put up in the $450-a-night hotel came to an end last night when the group was bussed from the scene. 

Despite some migrants attempting to defy city officials and remain camped out on the sidewalk, others have slammed the controversy. 

Venezuelan migrant Jefferson Gonzalez, 26, told DailyMail.com: ‘I am very ashamed and embarrassed because we are not in a position to demand. They make us all Venezuelans look bad and we are not all the same.’ 

‘Since some of us don’t have work. We are here for now, but we do not have options,’ he said. 

‘Tomorrow when we want to get ahead and get a job it could be difficult because these people left us in a bad position in front of the whole world.’

The new facility has been swiftly set up by Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, as he turned a cruise terminal in the Red Hook district of Brooklyn into a shelter with capacity for 1,000 people.

While city officials urged the migrants to accept the new accommodation as preferable to the freezing sidewalk, some have complained about the conditions.  

Llabrado, 22, a former special forces officer in Venezuela, said the only good thing about the site was the food. 

‘The jail is better,’ he said. ‘It’s so cold.’

He told DailyMail.com as he was waiting for the ferry outside the Red Hook facility that he was hoping to find a place to stay, as he believes the Brooklyn facility isn’t up to scratch. 

‘I can’t live here. It’s not like I can’t, I don’t want to. It’s not conditions for a normal person. I don’t want to come back here tonight. My plan today is to try and find a place to live.’

On Thursday afternoon, NYC congressman Daniel Goldman said the Brooklyn shelter was ‘not ideal’ but ‘under the circumstances, it’s very admirable’.

‘I think what the city has done and what the health department and hospitals have done in order to provide shelter, food, basic needs, is incredibly responsive. There will also be 1,200 people here. It is a temporary site. It has to be a temporary site,’ he said. 

The shelter has cots set up for the single men who are being housed there, but a chief complaint has been the outdoor shower area. 

Goldman said that migrants have been complaining about cold walking from the sleeping area to the shower area – a mounting concern as temperatures are expected to dip below freezing on Friday and Saturday.

‘We have already had a conversation with the health department about potentially putting up a tent, maybe some heaters on that roof, so that if you walk to and from the shower it’s warm. But inside the terminal, it’s quite warm. There are no issues,’ he said.

Haphazard attempts by the city to solve the crisis has seen New Yorkers forced to carry pepper spray when the ‘disruptive’ migrants took over the area earlier this week. 

The deadlock outside the hotel was worsening as a bitter cold snap is set to send temperatures in New York City plummeting to below-zero, but successful efforts to clear the site left only a solitary protestor remaining this morning. 

The clear-out began on Wednesday evening as 10 migrants boarded a bus that took them from the $450-a-night hotel to the Brooklyn facility.

When a bus arrived, one migrant was heard by DailyMail.com yelling: ‘Whoever wants to go, go. Whoever wants to stay, stay. 

‘We’re not going to sleep on those s*** beds.’

Despite repeated attempts to move the group before last night, around 25-35 migrants attempted to remain defiant, bolstered by left-wing activists who demanded that they be housed and fed in the expensive hotel. 

But their demonstration alongside the migrants proved futile as the scene was cleared by Thursday morning, with the mayor’s new facility now housing and feeding the influx. 

As the sidewalk outside The Watson Hotel was emptied overnight, only one woke activist appeared at the now-cleared site. 

Josephine, 26, an artist, traveled from her home in Brooklyn to deliver donuts and coffee to the migrants, only to discover no one was there when she arrived. 

She told DailyMail.com: ‘I heard there were people here and I wanted to bring them food. I didn’t know they left.’

She created a GoFundMe and raised $60 of funds to help the migrants, and also took $20 out of her own pocket towards the cause.

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‘What the mayor has been doing with the migrants is extremely violent and harmful,’ she added.

‘They have done nothing wrong forcing them to live in prison like conditions. I heard it was cold, there was vermin and it wasn’t clean.

‘These are people who have been stripped of their rights. They are here because they want to be free, work and support their families. They are here not out of choice but necessity.’

‘The Mayor is doing this to make the city clean and beautiful but in reality the city is decaying as a result of his policies that don’t support people.’ 

 City Hall pointed the finger at activists from groups including South Bronx Mutual Aid for fueling the standoff, with mayoral press secretary Fabien Levy saying before the clear-out: ‘I don’t even understand the logic here.

‘Instead of encouraging asylum seekers to sleep in warm, indoor, temperature-controlled quarters at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, these groups are telling migrants to sleep in tents on the streets.

‘The lack of reasoning here is astounding.’

Adams, who has been flip-flopping between begging the federal government for assistance to deal with the flood of migrants and boasting about his city being welcoming, made an in-person visit to the new Brooklyn site on Monday.

‘Since last summer, New York City has opened five Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers and 80+ emergency shelters to help the 43,000+ asylum seekers who have arrived,’ his office tweeted.

‘We’ve offered them shelter, food, legal assistance and other resources as we await national support.’

As the protests raged on earlier this week, the stalemate turned hostile as activists held umbrellas to block cameras while abuse was hurled at reporters. 

One reporter, filming for Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV, had his camera smashed by a migrant.

While police warned the migrants of action, no arrests have yet been made. 

Despite being offered food and shelter at the new facility, many rejected the move until they were cleared by city officials. 

After being evicted from their rooms at the Watson Hotel over the weekend, hordes of activists blockaded the sidewalk while the migrants camped around them for days. 

Efforts by New York authorities to move the migrants throughout the week included desperate pleas from evangelical pastor Rev. Erick Salgado, who serves as assistant commissioner in the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. 

He addressed the throng of migrants in Spanish yesterday evening, assuring them that their new shelter would be an improvement on the sidewalk outside the hotel.   

‘We are looking to transfer most of the asylum-seekers to the HERRC in Brooklyn,’ he said, referring to the Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center (HERRC).

‘We all know it is going to be getting real cold and windy and we want to make sure that they have the resources they need this winter.

‘Yesterday we went over there to the Brooklyn facility with many of them.

‘The majority of them want to go and stay there in Brooklyn – they have transportation. We have buses. And many of the local churches I put in place to help them over there as well.’ 

As the situation worsened and the migrant group appeared to dig in, New York residents voiced concerns over the city’s handling of the influx in recent times. 

After the encampment emerged seemingly overnight outside The Watson Hotel following their eviction, commuters raised fears over their own safety in the city. 

One single mom told DailyMail.com that she has been forced to carry pepper spray to try and make it through the frenzy on her way home. 

Erika Quintero, who lives across the street from the tent-laden encampment on West 57th street, told DailyMail.com that the migrants have already been ‘disruptive’ in the few hours since they set up camp.

‘Last night there was so much noise,’ said Quintero, who lives alone with her 9-year-old son in the residential building.

‘Loud music, people screaming,’ she said. ‘My son was trying to take a class on zoom. It’s very frightening.’