Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has continued placing Migrants at a controversial facility on Staten Island, after getting a stay of a judge’s order blocking the move.
An estimated 100 migrants are now living at the former St. John Villa Academy Complex, according to island officials, who had last month celebrated a judge’s order barring the city from filling the location with asylum seekers.
“It’s just disrespectful to the Staten Island community. It’s in your face, inappropriate,” fumed Councilman David Carr Thursday.
“At a minimum, the city should not have added more people.”
He said there were 70 to 80 migrants at the St. Villa Academe before the litigation — and there are more than 100 there now.
City sources said they have bussed migrants to the complex after they were granted a stay of a recent ruling by island state Supreme Court Judge Justice Wayne Ozzie while it is on appeal.
“There’s a stay of the judge’s ruling. Let’s be clear on that,” said a city official, who asked their name not be used.
“We desperately need to use the space.”
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-SI/Brooklyn) fumed at the city’s move.
“Mayor Adams seems to have no regard for the court or his constituents,” she said. “He just keeps putting citizens of OTHER countries before his own citizens and should stop taking away spaces and resources from hardworking New Yorkers.”
Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels co-founder who has spearheaded protests against the migrant move, said, “This expansion of the migrant shelter at St. John Villa Academy violates the spirit of the agreement.”
Adams’ office officially had no immediate comment.
The saga at the Staten Island site is an indication of how the city is desperately scrambling for space to put the waves of migrants, a situation so dire that Mayor Eric Adams is now visiting Central American countries to try to stem the flow.
More than 118,400 asylum seekers have arrived in the city since the spring of 2022 and nearly 60,000 are currently in shelters or receiving other services.
Adams’ team has warned that a huge and potentially record wave of migrants would arrive to the city by the busloads this week.
Meanwhile Judge Ozzie, in his Sept. 26 ruling, said the 40-year right to shelter consent decree declaring any one in the city a right to emergency housing is a “relic of the past.”
“The consent decree was entered into to address a specific problem existing at the time — to provide housing for unfortunate New Yorkers who needed shelter,” Ozzi wrote.
“No one can argue that there was at that time a situation of the magnitude existing today — a virtual flood of migrant asylum seekers whose numbers would fill two Yankee Stadiums and equal one-fifth of the population of Staten Island,” he said.
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