Migrant kids still housed at NYPD gym in Manhattan days after outcry

Migrant families with children are apparently still being housed in an old NYPD gym in Manhattan — several days after officials in Mayor Adams’ administration promised they’d move minors out of the facility amid legal concerns.

On Monday, Department of Social Services Commissioner Molly Wasow Park told the City Council that Adams’ administration would within 48 hours transfer migrant kids out of the NYPD Police Academy gym on E. 20th St. in Manhattan.

Wasow Park’s testimony came in response to a Daily News report that the city’s housing of kids at the facility could violate state rules against placing minors in congregate shelter settings.

While many of the children do appear to have been moved out, there were indications Friday children are still sheltered there.

Enryer, a migrant from Venezuela who only gave his first name, said there were still about a half dozen young kids inside the Police Academy gym, which the administration first opened last week as an emergency migrant housing site in an effort to alleviate pressure on the city’s overcrowded shelter systems.

“They have moved most of them,” he said, speaking in Spanish.

The News spotted one young child being carried inside the facility on Friday afternoon.

Spokespeople for Adams and the Department of Social Services did not immediately return requests for comment.

Josh Goldfein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project, said he has been getting reports throughout this week that migrant kids are still housed in the NYPD gym. He said he has asked for explanations from the administration to no avail — until Thursday night, when he received an emailed response from a Department of Social Services official.

“It is our understanding that children may be showing up at the Policy Academy (PA) with their families, however the staff at the PA are working with PATH to transfer those families as soon as possible,” read the email, which Goldfein shared with The News.

PATH is the intake center in the Bronx where families with kids are supposed to appear in order to receive placement at a shelter.

Goldfein said the response from the Social Services official “doesn’t make any sense” because it suggests migrant families with kids are showing up on their own accord at the Police Academy gym.

“It’s clearly illegal,” he said, adding that the rules against placing kids in congregate shelter settings were established due to data showing the practice increases the risk of minors being subjected to sexual abuse.

“I don’t imagine that anybody would deliberately violate a state regulation,” he continued. “I think that they are expanding the system very quickly and some people have not been instructed on what the rules are and mistakes are being made, but these rules exist to protect people who are highly vulnerable. We don’t want children to be exposed to communicable diseases or at risk of sexual assault. That’s why we have these rules and they need to be strictly enforced.”

The continued sheltering of kids at the NYPD building comes on the heels of Adams signing an executive order late Wednesday that suspended aspects of the city’s longstanding right-to-shelter law — including a prohibition on housing children in congregate settings.

Adams administration officials cautioned that the mayor did not issue the order with the intent of immediately violating existing right-to-shelter ordinances. However, they said he signed it as a precaution in the event that the city has to take drastic measures in light of this week’s expiration of Title 42, a federal border enforcement policy that has stemmed some of the migration across the U.S. southern border.

There are already believed to be some 40,000 asylum seekers in city shelters and emergency hotels, and the mayor has said he fears the clip of new arrivals will only accelerate in light of the Title 42 lapse.

Amid the worsening crisis — which is costing the city millions of dollars per day — the mayor is sending some asylum seekers to live in hotels upstate, while asking city agencies to identify vacant spaces in municipal government-owned buildings that could be repurposed into migrant housing.

Manhattan Councilman Keith Powers, a Democrat who lives near the Police Academy facility, said he has sympathy for the administration in that this is “an unprecedented crisis.”

But Powers, who asked the question at Monday’s Council hearing that prompted Wasow Park’s answer about the 48-hour timeline, also said he got the impression from her testimony that the NYPD academy would not be used to house any more migrants going forward, let alone children.

“My understanding [of her answer] was that the 24 to 48 hours was the goal to get everyone out of there,” he said. “The Police Academy gym is not an appropriate place for anyone to be living.”