WORLD WORLDWIDE USA New York NY New York City NYC the city THE CITY News Journal Update - THE CITY SCOOP: Cops Rough Up Migrants in Chaotic Brooklyn Raid

 

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If you know anyone who might like this newsletter, send it to them. If this was sent to you by someone else, subscribe here — it's free!  Dear New Yorkers, On Wednesday evening, Mayor Eric Adams delivered his starkest remarks yet on the city’s migrant crisis at a town hall on the Upper West Side. “This issue will destroy New York City,” Adams said. “The city we knew, we’re about to lose.” The following morning, the NYPD swarmed a Brooklyn migrant shelter to confiscate mopeds parked in front of it. The situation —  at 455 Jefferson St. in Bushwick — quickly escalated. Officers wielded stun guns and shoved migrants to the ground before leaving with six men in handcuffs and trucks full of confiscated mopeds, according to videos and eyewitness accounts.  The mopeds are often a means for men in migrant shelters to earn money as food delivery drivers, even without legal authorization to work. While migrants are eligible for licenses under New York’s Green Light Law, many are unaware of how to go through the proper protocol, advocates say.  Hundreds of men at the shelter are also facing eviction at the end of the month when their 60-day warnings expire, as THE CITY previously reported. Bushwick Councilmember Jen Gutiérrez slammed Thursday’s raid, and called out the mayor’s seemingly conflicting positions. “This mayor can’t have it both ways, saying ‘we care about you and want you to thrive’ while at the same time targeting migrant shelters in this way,” Gutiérrez said. She added that city resources would be better spent helping register the mopeds — rather than confiscating them, and hampering migrants’ ability to save money and move out of city shelters.  Read more here.  Some other items of note: Homeland Security officials began texting thousands of migrants in NYC earlier this month to alert them that they could apply right away for work permits — something legal experts in the Biden administration had long known, reports The Marshall Project. Migrants can enter the country with a temporary permission called humanitarian parole, allowing them to avoid a 180-day waiting period normally required for people seeking asylum. But it’s not certain the administration’s improvised fix can succeed without creating new logjams in the asylum pipeline. Some Bronx residents are being kept in the dark on what happened at recent meetings of their local community boards. Six of the borough’s 12 community boards regularly break a New York state law that requires public bodies to record and provide accessible minutes of their meetings, according to a review by THE CITY going back to 2019. Although some boards in the Bronx documented most meetings, others have not published minutes in more than a year, essentially locking out community members from seeing what is being done. Classes began yesterday for the city’s more than 900,000 public school students. As Chalkbeat reports, multiple issues have loomed over the start of the school year in recent years — and this year was no exception, with a possible school bus driver strike, a heat wave, simmering budget issues and more potentially overshadowing the school year. As of Sept. 7, 621 people were hospitalized with COVID in New York City, and average new cases per day were up by 8% since last week. THE CITY can help you navigate the recent COVID surge. Here's our tracker and our guide to what you need to know about treatments, tests and more. Weather scoop by New York Metro Weather Friday's Weather Rating: 3/10. The good news: It is Friday. The bad news: High temps reach near 90° F with ridiculously high dew points and scattered afternoon storms expected once again. Not a washout, but it's just so uncomfortable out there. The vibes remain unstable. Things To Do Here’s what’s going on around the city this week. Saturday, Sept. 9: Growing Mushrooms in the Garden, a workshop teaching how to grow gourmet mushrooms either indoors or outdoors using low-cost tools. East Fourth Street Community Garden, Brooklyn. 2-4 p.m. Free. Saturday, Sept. 9: Queens Memory Project’s Community Weaving Project, a fabric-based art workshop facilitated by Queens-based artist Antonia Perez about “memories and ideas of home.” Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City. 1:30-3:30 p.m. Free with RSVP. Saturday, Sept. 9 and Sunday, Sept. 10: Parade of Trains, an opportunity to ride the Transit Museum’s vintage subway cars. The trains can be boarded at the Coney Island-bound B/Q platform at the Kings Highway station in Brooklyn or the Manhattan-bound B/Q platform at Brighton Beach. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free with your subway fare. THE KICKER: On Saturday, the corner of Rivington and Ludlow streets in Lower Manhattan will be co-named Beastie Boys Square after a decade-long effort. EV Grieve reports that the occasion will be marked with an appearance by Michael "Mike D" Diamond and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, plus some pop-up shops. (Relatedly, here is THE CITY’s guide to renaming a street in NYC.) Thanks, as always, for reading. Make it a great Friday. Love, THE CITY P.S. Love THE CITY? Our nonprofit newsroom runs on support from readers like you. Donate here.

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