Critics say asylum seeker chaos outside The Roosevelt Hotel is by design
NEW YORK -- Asylum seekers with nowhere to go spent another night sleeping on the sidewalk outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.
There was pushing and shoving as many asylum seekers tried to register for services over the weekend, and some even spent the nights sleeping on sidewalks and buses.
More private security and an increased NYPD presence brought a semblance of order to the scene on Sunday. However, single adult asylum seekers continued to wait on the sidewalk or on buses, while families and women with children were given priority.
Watch Zinnia Maldonado's report
It was an uncomfortable Sunday night for dozens seeking help, with some sleeping on the sidewalks along 45th Street and on Vanderbilt Avenue. Others were hunkered down on mini-buses brought to Midtown East. They were eating takeout food and using makeshift mobile phone charging stations.
"It's obviously heartbreaking, but I honestly can't help but think this could be avoided," said Roger Nava of White Plains.
Critics say all of the chaos is by design.
Asylum seekers from Senegal, where more than half the population lives in poverty, endured an uncomfortable arrival in New York, with hundreds of single adults on the sidewalk outside The Roosevelt Hotel, or sleeping on buses brought in to provide some shelter.
One man who spoke to CBS New York was a friend checking on those from Senegal.
"They feeling not good, because we don't like sleeping outside. You never know. It was raining last night," Ousseynou Mbadhie said.
Services at the Roosevelt are almost exclusively focused now on families and women with children. Activists say most of them are being bused to shelters upstate. Single adults are being told to wait.
Critics say the recent chaotic scene at the hotel is part of a city plan to win more support from Albany and Washington.
"So we have a lot of people stranded in New York City because of some type of petty politics that are being played by the city asking for more money from the feds, and they think by creating this fabricated chaos they're gonna get funds coming down the pipeline faster," said Power Malu, of the group Artists Athletes Activists.
READ MORE: Asylum seekers arrive by bus at former high school in College Point, Queens
At the Bronx Dominican Day Parade on Sunday, Mayor Eric Adams said the city can only do so much with more than 90,000 asylum seekers who've come to New York.
"Yes, yes, we've been saying it for the longest, we've been saying it for the longest that we're out of space. This is a national response. We need national help. We're out of space," Adams said.
In terms of the uncomfortable scene outside the hotel, with people lining up outside the hotel and sleeping on sidewalk, the mayor's office said, "In all honesty, New Yorkers may continue to see that more and more as hundreds of asylum seekers continue to arrive in the city each day."
A spokesman for the mayor called it a heart-breaking reality.