Thousands of migrants who arrived in New York City in recent years were arrested for a variety of crimes, including assaults, robberies, and rapes, while staying in city-run shelters across the five boroughs, according to new data.
On Monday, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican who represents Staten Island and parts of South Brooklyn, released New York City’s response to her request for crime data on the administration’s migrant shelters.
“After 1.5 years and multiple broken promises and delays, I finally received a response to my Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request with the City of New York for migrant crime data and the results are deeply disturbing. It turns out NYC taxpayers paid to house 3,219 arrestees between January 2023 and October 2024 in shelters and luxury hotel rooms at billions of dollars in taxpayer expense,” the congresswoman wrote.
According to the data, 1,049 crimes were committed within city-run migrant shelters, 16,371 crimes were committed within 1,000 feet of shelters, and 3,219 arrestees cited a city-run shelter as their home address during the course of 22 months.
Nearly half of the crimes committed in city-run migrant shelters, 518 out of 1,049, were for one of the seven major felonies: murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto.
Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of the offenses committed within 1,000 feet of migrant shelters, 11,107 out of 16,371, involved one of the aforementioned severe felonies.
However, the city’s statement states that it is unclear how many of the offenses involving shelters were perpetrated by migrants, as information about legal status is sometimes not obtained during arrests.
“As for your question regarding the tracking of crimes involving migrants, please be advised that when speaking with crime victims, witnesses, suspects, or persons subject to enforcement action, including arrest, members of service do not inquire regarding that person’s immigration status except in rare situations where the status is relevant to the criminal investigation at issue,” the response reads.
The most common charges for the 3,219 arrestees who named a city-run migrant shelter as their home address were petit theft (1,285), assault in the third degree and related offenses (544), hazardous narcotics (497), grand larceny (493), and felony assault (352).
“It is obvious why the city stonewalled and delayed response not once, not twice but three times after my initial request by letter in October 2023 and by FOIL in January 2024,” Malliotakis wrote.
“Simply put, Democrats from Joe Biden to Governor Hochul to Mayor Adams made New Yorkers less safe and forced taxpayers to foot the bill for increased crime and deteriorated quality of life after repeatedly telling us these criminal migrants were innocent asylum seekers who were all vetted,” she continued.
City Hall response
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When contacted about Malliotakis’ FOIL request, Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office, stated, “When a national humanitarian crisis arrived at New York City’s doorstep in the spring of 2022, the Adams administration stepped forward. We opened hundreds of emergency shelters throughout our city, provided shelter and food to over 235,000 migrants in need, assisted in the completion of over 107,000 asylum, work authorization, and TPS (temporary protected status) applications, assisted in the transition of over 195,000 migrants from our shelter system to the next stage of their journey, and much more.”
She attributed most of the migrant situation to a lack of federal government help.
“We did all of this largely on our own, with little help from the federal government, which created this problem through decades of neglect and refusal to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Despite all this, Mayor Adams was one of the few elected leaders in New York City not only asking the federal government for help, but fiercely advocating for the legal right to work for the hundreds of thousands of people paroled into our country. Unfortunately, those calls went largely unreturned,” she added.
Mamelak claimed that at this time, citywide crime decreased, and “no family with children was forced to sleep on the street.”
“Today, we are in our 10th straight month of our migrant population declining in our shelter system, and we expect over 50 sites to close by July of this year, including all but two of the sites made in this information request. We are proud of our work, but will never be dishonest to New Yorkers about the situation the federal government left our city — and so many others across the country — in,” said Mamelak.
Migrant crisis
The migrant crisis has brought over 220,000 new migrants to the city since spring 2022, causing the city to set up emergency shelters throughout the five boroughs amid strong opposition on Staten Island.
As fewer and fewer people arrive in New York City, the administration has reduced the city’s response, with dozens of dedicated migrant shelters, including those on Staten Island, closing in recent months.
