NYC migrant centers offer no-frills shelter. But space is running out.
POLITICO got an exclusive look inside three of the migrant respite centers.
TroibNews 
NEW YORK — Emergency shelters have popped up around New York City to accommodate some 95,000 migrants who’ve arrived in the five boroughs from the U.S. border with Mexico over the past year. Some 56,000 remain in the city's care.
Zach Iscol, the city’s emergency management commissioner, gave POLITICO an exclusive tour Wednesday night of three of the so-called migrant respite centers.
“It’s been out of public view until now,” Iscol said, nodding to recent news stories showing migrant men sleeping on the sidewalk because the city’s shelter system is full.
Iscol warned the migrant crisis has gotten so dire that asylum-seekers with children could soon be forced to sleep on the street.
Those who’ve secured shelter are sleeping on cots inside in makeshift sites like a shuttered prison in Harlem, a former church in Queens and even a one-time martial arts studio.
The no-frills centers serve meals in small cardboard boxes, have few showering facilities for hundreds of people and a “reconnection room” where migrants can connect with family around the country — and receive a one-way ticket out of New York.
