00:00Where is, I was about to say, where is the change?
00:19I cannot say enough about this amazing team that's standing behind me.
00:34What they were able to accomplish in a short period of time.
00:40History is going to be kind to them, and how they provided service in a humane way.
00:51In spite of all the politics, they stood up.
00:55And I just want to personally thank you for what they have done.
01:01The hours and hours of calls, watching Molly navigate the opening of sites over and over again.
01:09Watching Deputy Mayor, at the time, Williams Isom, who spent countless number of hours navigating this complexity.
01:20And my Chief of Staff, Camille Joseph Valla, probably the best crisis management person this city has ever seen.
01:31And then the personal aspects of this.
01:34Traveling with Commissioner Castro back to Puebla, Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia.
01:45Standing in the Darien Gap, watching people taking a long journey here to America first and making their way to New York.
01:55And then, months previous to that, he traveled with me down to the border, El Paso, and saw people sleeping in airports, on street corners, in front of churches, and coming back here and watching with a renewed energy and strength.
02:17And Molly Safer over at CSS, and her team, and Dr. Ted Jones, the ever-present optimist, each morning, we used to get so tired of him smiling all the darn time when we're going through all of this, but he never, never made us believe we could not do this.
02:42This was a difficult, difficult task.
02:47This is ever going to be a symbol of the resiliency of this city, and how you could do things in the right way.
02:57Deputy Mayor, Ana Amazar, many people don't report this over and over again.
03:08We were criticized.
03:11There was so much reports that we were inhumane to immigrants.
03:15It reached an international level.
03:18And national immigrant leaders, we asked them to come to the city, and they said, no, your mayor is anti-immigrant.
03:25And we said, you need to come and see.
03:27And they came here, spent the day, we took them around, and they saw what we were doing, and how we handled 40,000 children, now 50,000 children that came through our system, 4,000 people at one time a week.
03:48They saw what we were doing with temporary protective status, and how we lobbied Washington, D.C., to increase the numbers.
03:55They saw how we fed, housed, and clothed people with dignity.
03:59They saw a mayor that spent the night in the Herc, and talking to the residents, the coldest day of the year.
04:06And at the end of the night, they went to Gracie Mansion and sat down and had dinner with me.
04:12And they said, we owe you an apology.
04:15No one in the country is doing what you and your administration are doing.
04:21And we're going to go back to our cities of Chicago and border towns, and we're going to tell the entire country the work that New Yorkers are doing.
04:31And they wrote a letter to Washington, D.C., and say New York should be the model of what the country needs to do.
04:41That's what we did.
04:43And so present day may not be kind, but history will be kind.
04:47Because these people standing behind me, they did their job, and they went beyond the call of duty.
04:55Yes, these are clean floors now, and they're quiet.
04:59But over there was the health intake center.
05:03There were rows of chairs that were sitting here that people were afraid, uncertain if they were going to be shoved away like others did throughout the country.
05:12Back there was a place you would go to get food, line up with children.
05:18Parents were anticipating the first days in school.
05:24This is going to be one of the most important chapters in our books.
05:28237,000 migrants and asylum seekers went through our system.
05:36And Roosevelt Hotel was a symbol of that.
05:40We established the Asylum Seeker Arrival Center and Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center in May of 2023.
05:52It's easy to forget what it looked like during those times because we're a few years away from that.
05:59And when it opened during the height of the International Asylum Seeker crisis, we were stopping buses.
06:07I remember Commissioner Castro, you and I, seeing the first bus at the Port Authority.
06:13And watching the buses coming on, looking at the faces of people.
06:18And seeing that the mayor of the city of New York was there, was there.
06:23We tripled our shelter capacity in under two years.
06:27It took 45 years to build our shelter system.
06:30We had to do it in two years.
06:32Standing up a vaccine program that provided over 200,000 life-saving vaccinations.
06:39And providing schooling for 50,000 students.
06:44Amidst an international shortage of immigration lawyers,
06:49we created a first in the nation asylum application help center,
06:54and helped over 111,000 people apply for work authorization, temporary protected status, and asylums.
07:03One day, one of those people we help is going to be standing at a podium like this,
07:08and they're going to talk about that journey.
07:11We stay focused, and we helped over 84% of the people who came in our care take the next step on their journey.
07:22And now, in addition to closing this location, we have closed 62 other locations, migrant shelters, in just a year.
07:31And the average number of arrivals dropped from the 4,000 peak to now 100 per week today.
07:40And as we take this final step, we can look back and say, job well done.
07:46Job well done.
07:47And I could not have done it without our employees and staffers and leaders that are behind me.
07:54And no one did it better than Molly.
07:57She lived this entire adventure.
08:01And we thank her as a New Yorker, and we thank this entire team.
08:06And I'm going to turn it over to Director Molly Schaefer to say a few words.
08:12Thank you, Mayor Adams.
08:17It's a pleasure to be here to celebrate this milestone.
08:22The Arrival Center came to symbolize an extraordinary chapter in the history of New York City.
08:27A chapter where New York City was, more than any other city, asked to meet an unprecedented moment and do what we do best, find a way.
08:36The city never had the ability to control the number of people coming into New York City, but what we could control is how we treated them once they got here.
08:46And this response included the combined work of thousands of New Yorkers in government, dedicating thousands of hours to ensure the safety and security of our newest New Yorkers.
08:58And thousands more everyday New Yorkers who poured the best of themselves into welcoming our new neighbors with compassion and often great enthusiasm.
09:09It feels almost surreal listening to Mayor Adams reference the numbers and the impact of what we did as a city and what we accomplished here at the Arrival Center.
09:19But if I may, I want to add one more number to this to humanize this event today.
09:24More than a thousand children have been born while their families stayed in just half of our facilities.
09:31The work that this city did to support so many thousands of families was amazing.
09:38And we're proud of the part that we played.
09:42There are too many people to mention who were part of this response, but I would like to recognize our partners who joined us here today to mark this milestone.
09:51Firstly, thank you to Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor Camille Joseph-Farlick, who steady leadership and guidance ensured we all stayed focused on our mission.
10:02Thank you to Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services Suzanne Miles Gustave, who jumped in and supported this effort.
10:11And thank you to former Deputy Mayor Ann Williams Isom for keeping us grounded in the humanity of the clients that we served every day.
10:20Thank you to Commissioner Molly Park, who has been focused on supporting these new arrivals with the same gusto as traditional unhoused New Yorkers.
10:30Thank you to Commissioner Manny Castro, who has always been on the scene to welcome migrants from the day buses arrived.
10:38Thank you to Dr. Ted Long at Health and Hospitals, who ran both this site and ensured that we all remember that health care is a human right.
10:48And thank you to Commissioner Zach Iskell and NYSEM's first Deputy Commissioner Christina Farrell and their team, who always answered the call on the hairiest days.
10:58And finally, thank you to Chancellor Ramos for enrolling over 50,000 students and setting them up for success.
11:06And then finally, finally, thank you to my entire team for their tireless service to this effort.
11:13Thank you. Thanks so much, Molly.
11:15I'm going to I want to just before we depart, got to bring up both the former deputy mayor who was really overseeing this and my amazing chief of staff.
11:34What they did just was amazing.
11:37And I told them back then and I hope we did it that we need to document this because history need to see what happened.
11:46You know, there were a whole lot of people on the sideline and never got on the field.
11:51Saving lives is a contact physical sport that you can't sit in the bleachers and talk about what should have been done.
11:58You need to roll up your sleeve and get in the game.
12:00They got in the game.
12:01So I'm going to talk it over to the chief of staff and then our former deputy mayor.
12:06Thank you, Mayor.
12:11When I knew that we were going to be closing the Roosevelt today, I knew that it was time sort of for a reunion.
12:18And this team, when we tell you and we have told you over the months and years that we have been in this place,
12:26that this was a once in a generation opportunity for us to show up for New Yorkers,
12:33both our traditional New Yorkers and our newest New Yorkers.
12:37And we couldn't have done it without each other.
12:39We, when you come into government, you hope that you will accomplish just one good thing.
12:46Just one.
12:47And I am proud to say that in my time in this administration, we showed up for hundreds of thousands of people and children who will likely be the next leaders in our country and in the world.
13:01And we did it with humanity and grace.
13:03And we could not have done it without the leadership, the steadfast encouragement of Mayor Adams, who led from the front on this issue.
13:13So thank you.
13:16I wasn't supposed to speak, but this is what I'm going to say.
13:20Both of our mothers were born in Trinidad and Tobago.
13:23So to some degree, we have been built for this moment.
13:26I'm getting ready to become a grandmother soon.
13:29And this will be the story that I will tell my granddaughter about how we helped people.
13:33Was it perfect?
13:34No.
13:35Did we do everything right?
13:36No.
13:37But we did it with the best that we had, with the care that we had.
13:41And I couldn't be more proud of the work that we've done and the people that I've done it with.
13:46So thank you very much.
13:48I'm going to bring up my brother, Manny.
13:53You know, so you could talk in Spanish.
13:56And, you know, this has been such, such a learning experience to see a dreamer who came here with a mom.
14:04And now, you know, God is good.
14:06Now you're in charge of the dreams of others.
14:08You know, history is going to be kind to you, brother.
14:10What you did and what you're doing is just amazing, you know.
14:15Appreciate it, Mayor.
14:16Thank you so much.
14:17I wanted to share a few words today to especially thank Mayor Adams.
14:23Because when the buses began to arrive, Mayor Adams was there.
14:30No one asked him to go.
14:31No one said, you should go.
14:34He knew it was a very difficult moment.
14:36But he also understood it was important to send a message to our immigrant communities and to all those who would be responding to this humanitarian crisis.
14:48So I thank you, Mayor Adams, for being there from the beginning and for allowing our team to respond the way we would be proud to respond to this humanitarian crisis.
15:01See, my team responded that first day the buses began to arrive and we were at Port Authority in a corner off to the side welcoming asylum seekers, many of whom had crossed the Daring Jungle and many borders and had arrived to the border and had not received the support and care that any human being deserves to get.
15:27And they were sent to New York City without any coordination, without any support and they arrived here to New York City.
15:33And when I asked Mayor Adams to join me to welcome those buses, he did.
15:40And when a child about five years old stepped off the bus, I said to the mayor, I myself, when I was five years old, I crossed the border with my mother and we made ourselves our way up to New York City.
15:58And I wish there had been someone, there had been a city to welcome me like we are doing today.
16:06So I'm very proud for everything we had done.
16:09We spent 10 months trying to figure out how to best welcome people, how to best support them, how to connect them to the resources that we have in New York City.
16:19And when we first opened this site, it felt frankly like a miracle.
16:25But you know, I knew deep down that no other team, no other mayor could have done this and what we have done other than Mayor Eric Adams and this team here with us today.
16:41So I'm very proud of everything we've accomplished.
16:44I always say this, millions of Americans in the future will look back at this site and at this team and will trace their immigration stories to this very moment.
16:55And I've said this over and over the last couple of months, there's an attempt to erase and undermine what we've accomplished.
17:02And we're here to set the record straight and to make sure that the people that have responded to this crisis in such a way, get the full credit that they deserve.
17:13So I want to thank Mayor Eric Adams, former Deputy Mayor Ann William Sison for all your support.
17:20Of course, Chief of Staff Camille Joseph Barlick, Director Molly Schafer, Dr. Ted Long, and current Deputy Mayor Suzanne Gustav Miles for all their support.
17:34The last thing I have to say is thanks to all the New Yorkers, all the officials who supported us in this trajectory of supporting thousands of people.
17:44In the future, millions of generations of Americans will see this point and this space as the beginning of their lives in this country and in this city.
