Federal officials tell New York City to improve its handling of migrant crisis, raise questions about local response
CBSN
The Biden administration this week urged New York to provide better information to migrants about the immigration process and to expedite their departure from city shelters, issuing recommendations that seemed to question the effectiveness of a local effort to house tens of thousands of newcomers.
Erin Heeter, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said the recommendations were issued by a team DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had assigned to examine New York City's network of over 200 hotels and other makeshift shelters that are currently housing nearly 60,000 migrants.
The recommendations by DHS represent the Biden administration's most substantive response to increasingly vocal pleas from New York leaders, including Mayor Eric Adams, seeking to secure additional federal support for the city's migrant housing effort, which has triggered some local backlash and created rifts between city, state and federal Democrats.
