NYC: after more than two weeks, protests continue against Eric Adams over Staten Island immigrant shelter

Residents of Staten Island, New York City, are maintaining their pickets around Saint John Villa in protest against Eric Adams' immigration management policies. The mass demonstrations have lasted more than two weeks and have brought together hundreds of residents of the New York district to the streets. They are calling for a halt in the housing of any further migrants in Staten Island centers and for more steps to be taken to stop the arrival of new asylum seekers.

The demonstrators are concentrated especially in the surroundings of a center in which the local administration of Eric Adams installed a large number of immigrants and where he plans to transfer more. There, at the intersection of Landis and Knaught streets, neighbors installed a large loudspeaker that, hour after hour, shouts slogans against migrants in six languages. "Go back," the speaker repeatedly exhorts in English, Spanish or Russian.

Several videos show how the neighbors do not rest even at night and maintain their positions around the old Catholic school, converted into a reception center for migrants by the Adams government. In the images you can see hundreds of New Yorkers shouting slogans such as "Close it." In other images, it is even seen how a group of these neighbors stands in front of a bus to prevent it from transporting more undocumented immigrants to the neighborhood.

“This is the first place where they’re trying really infringe on our liberties and our freedoms,” John Tabacco, a political commentator who traveled to support the pickets, told the protesters. "“This is the hill I want to die on. Because if we break here, we break everywhere.”

The protesters and their pickets are also supported by local authorities on Staten Island. Representatives of the district, the least populous of the city's five, took the Adams administration to court for having the former Catholic school to house migrants. According to the New York Times, Staten Island authorities initially won a victory over New York City. A judge blocked Adams' measures, until an appeals court sided with the city. It was then that protests against the arrival of migrants intensified.