As Trump Enforcement Begins, Upper West Side Migrant Shelters Are Now Almost Empty

By Alex Maroño Porto

As the Trump administration launches plans for mass deportations of migrants that it considers illegal, several of the city-run Upper West Side shelters that had been housing immigrants for the last two years have emptied without fanfare.

Two of them, in fact, were closed just last Friday.

But some migrants at remaining shelters say they now are reluctant to go out because of the possibility of being seized by immigration police under the Trump anti-immigrant campaign.

At the height of the migrant influx, city shelters hosted some of the more than 210,000 migrants and asylum seekers who arrived in New York City between spring 2022 and August 2024.

According to a press release from Mayor Eric Adams, the number of asylum seekers housed in city shelters dropped for 22 straight weeks by December 10, 2024, when the migrant population reached its lowest point in more than 17 months. 

Visiting shelter sites over the past month, and speaking to neighbors, I found that residences that once ignited controversy and concern have become serene sites – buildings with little outward signs of activity. Former residents have moved on, either to other shelters or to other cities or to places they find after getting their work permits, according to some people interviewed for this story. This pattern was already reported by the Rag last year.

Along with the Amsterdam Humanitarian Response and Relief Center (Amsterdam Residence) at 205-207 West 85th Street; the Belnord Hotel, at 209 West 87th Street; the Riverside Terrace, at 350 West 88th Street; and the Park West Hotel, at Central Park West and West 106th Street; the Stratford Arms provided shelter for asylum-seekers who came to the city, often fleeing violence at home and seeking a brighter future for their families.

On Thursday, January 23, a day when the sun failed to lift the freezing temperatures, I arrived at the Stratford Arms, located at 117 West 70th Street. Both the Stratford Arms and the Amsterdam Residence opened in June 2023 as part of the mayor’s response to what he termed a “humanitarian crisis unlike any other before” that the city was facing. The two shelters, which previously functioned as residence halls for the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, hosted around 300 families with children at their peak, said Liz Garcia, deputy press secretary at the Mayor’s Office. 

Both formally closed Friday. Garcia said that no guests remained.

Going forward, any families in need of shelter will be sent to another temporary emergency shelter, said Garcia. Asked about the families who were housed at the Stratford Arms and the Amsterdam Residence, Garcia said, “We do not track clients once they leave our care.”

Two weeks ago when I visited, stillness enveloped the Stratford and its surroundings. Few people ventured out on a 28-degree day, and unlike during my previous visit in February 2024, no families could be observed leaving the building.  

A neighbor on the street, who would not give his name, expressed support for the shelter, arguing that its occupants had posed no problems. “I had no issues with the residents or the building,” he said. “I hate to see people getting forced out.” 

Barry, a neighbor of five years who declined to give his last name, agreed, calling the area as safe as it has ever been. With the closing of the Stratford Arms, he wondered where the migrants would go next. “It makes me sad that the shelters are closing,” he said. 

People at nearby businesses said they will miss the community that asylum-seekers and their families created around the Stratford Arms. Bibi, who works at Epices Bakery across the street from the shelter, said she would give tarts and other sweets to migrant children, many of them Venezuelan, when they visited the store. “What is going to happen to the kids?” she said “I feel bad. Many have been through a lot before they came here.”

Despite some neighbors’ disappointment, other people acknowledged challenges of living near the shelter.

Greg Pappas, who has lived across the street from the Stratford for the last 21 years, said “it has been kind of scary.” When the temperature was higher, he said, the street used to be full of people—some using drugs in front of children, he said—and electric delivery bikes were often left on the street, cluttering the sidewalk. “What happens is that the street sweepers cannot come in and clean the block,” he said. “They do not come out and move them like the rest of us.” 

An employee at J’s Cleaner, who wished to remain anonymous, said he thinks the block will be more peaceful. “It is going to be safer for the neighborhood,” he said. “Sometimes they argue with people who pass by and sometimes they have fights.”

Like the Stratford Arms, the Amsterdam Residence looked empty when I arrived late last month. John, a security guard who said he had been working there for a year and a half, mentioned that fewer than 20 families were currently housed at the residence, but when I entered the building to obtain official details, workers told me they could not provide any information. The same happened when I tried to speak with the manager at the Stratford. 

Passersby around the Amsterdam Residence had few if any complaints. “This is the best shelter I have worked in, I never had an issue for the most part,” said John. Dirk Willebrand, son of Green Party politician Julia Willebrand and an Upper West Side resident of 56 years, said the area experienced “more activity” as a result of the shelter, but there were no issues with those housed there. “The migrants who lived in the building were respectful of the neighborhood,” he said. 

Joshua Ruben, living in the neighborhood since 1974, echoed his words. Initially, he said, the newcomers would sit on residents’ steps, but once they were told it was private property, they left without any incidents. “They used to have guards outside the two doors, and that kept things cool,” Ruben said. 

Julio, a resident on Broadway nearby, said he felt the shelter had made the neighborhood more inclusive. “This community is very wealthy, white, very much one sort of monoculture,” he said. “I grew up in Miami, a place with a lot of diversity, people from all over Latin America, and this neighborhood is very much not that. And I think it is good to have more people from different places here.” 

On January 24, I arrived in front of the cobalt blue awnings covering the Belnord Hotel’s two entrances. The building opened as a “temporary emergency men’s homeless shelter” in 2020, and became an asylum-seekers shelter in March 2023, as the Rag then reported. With 131 rooms, the Belnord housed families from countries like Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru, but recently, most seemed to be gone — although, as with the previous two shelters, the Belnord receptionist did not share any information about its status. 

Felina, a Belnord resident of 35 years, said the building was used as a men’s shelter during COVID. “It was horrible living among those people,” she said in Spanish. Her main criticism of its later time as a migrant shelter, she said, was the unequal treatment she received compared to the newcomers. “The migrant families were fine because they were given everything,” she complained.

Later, I arrived at the Riverside Terrace, a 125-unit former New York Institute of Technology residence hall next to Riverside Park that opened as a migrant shelter in March 2023. Compared to the previous shelters, Riverside seemed busier, with a few women with children in strollers leaving the building. A person who identified herself as the manager but declined to give her name did not provide any information about its current status. 

Garcia, from the mayor’s office, would not confirm any plans to shutter the Belnord or Riverside Terrace. “We have not announced plans to close any other shelters on the Upper West Side,” she said.  

For migrants in the shelters still operating, Trump’s immigration crackdown has engendered fear of going outside, said Arelis Figueroa, pastor of La Iglesia del Pueblo, a spiritual community supporting migrants that meets at the St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church, at 263 West 86th St., on Sundays.

“There are people who are not going to church on either Sunday or Monday,” when the church hosts a resource fair, she said. “Many of them live [in Riverside Terrace] and are afraid right now.” 

“A lot of people are very afraid; they don’t know whether to send their children to school or stay at home, regardless of whether their children were born in the United States or not,” said Elaine, a 46-year-old Peruvian mother of two. “They are disoriented and don’t know what to do.”

Elaine said she has been living in Riverside Terrace with her 11-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl since May 2022. The Lima native says that the eight floors of Riverside “are pretty full” and mainly consist of asylum-seeker families and single mothers like her. Despite noting some complaints about food quality —something the Rag reported before—Elaine is grateful for the treatment. “I thank God because I was never treated badly; everything has been good,” she said in Spanish. The management “takes great care of the immigrants and sends professionals for psychological therapy.”

Having supportive organizations nearby like the St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church has benefited the migrant families greatly, said Elaine. Since August 2022, the church has been hosting a Monday morning fair to provide clothing, legal services, and other resources to refugees and asylum-seekers, said Andrea Steinkamp, assistant pastor, in a phone interview. “We have served between 100 and 125 people a week and we will continue to do that work with the focus of particular attention to being responsive to some of the actions of the new administration,” said Steinkamp. 

To ease migrants’ fears of potential immigration raids, the church has taken measures, including posting a sign at the door stating that agents from ICE, the federal immigration enforcement agency, are not permitted to enter the building unless they have a judicial warrant. “We are helping people to ensure that in the midst of all of this uncertainty things are not completely chaotic,” she said.

The last shelter I visited was the Park West Hotel, located in front of Central Park and formerly known as Astor on the Park. The 94-room building opened in April 2020 as a shelter for homeless women, as the Rag reported, and was converted into a shelter for asylum-seeker families in August 2022. It then housed 30 families and 20 school-aged children, with a total of 126 beds, and later that year, it became a home for dozens of Venezuelan asylum-seekers like José Arturo and Estefani Mijares. 

Marisela, an Ecuadorian from Quito, had been living at the shelter for 30 days with her husband and daughter after entering the country with an appointment made on CBP One, an app that allowed people to schedule appointments at the southern border of the U.S., until the Trump Administration shut it down shortly after the president’s inauguration. She said they were told they could stay for 60 days —a limit Adams adopted in October 2023 for migrant families— and, after then, “We do not know anything.” 

The shelter, she said, was “pretty full,” but it does not seem to be primarily migrants anymore. “Everyone speaks English,” she said. 

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