Residents and Republicans held a Feb. 7 rally outside a soon-to-open migrant shelter on Bruckner Boulevard and East 141st Street, marking the second time this week that demonstrations broke out at the 2,200-bed facility slated to open late this month.
With signs reading “Bronx First” and “Red Wave > Migrant Wave,” members of the newly-formed Bronx Caucus of the New York Young Republicans Club and others gathered to make their opposition known and blame Democratic leadership for allowing the shelter.
The Bronx caucus of the New York Young Republicans Club was established only about a month ago and has 30 members, several of whom traveled from outside the borough in support of local residents, according to caucus chair Christopher Reid.
The migrant shelter is set to open in late February despite strong opposition from local elected officials and community members who say they were blindsided by the decision. The city maintains that the site will be used only temporarily and will have strong security measures in place, but residents still hope to shut it down before it opens.
Reid said the building should have been used to house people from the community, such as victims of the Jan. 10 fire in the Allerton neighborhood, which displaced over 250 people. When their city-funded hotel stays expired in late January, many had nowhere to go but into the homeless shelter system.
“We can’t help anyone else unless we help ourselves first,” Reid told the Bronx Times.
Tyreek Goodman, who is running for City Council District 8 on the Republican and Conservative Party line, said people across the political spectrum oppose the shelter.
With the election of President Donald Trump, “America is saying put its citizens first,” he told the group. “This looks like a money grab.”
Michael Pineda, a firefighter who lives in Yonkers and works in Parkchester, heard about the rally as a caucus member and expressed concern about critical resources being potentially overloaded by the addition of 2,200 people into one area. The new shelter should be accompanied by an increase in fire and police personnel, said Pineda. “We’re stretched out thin,” he told the Bronx Times. “Lots of sleepless nights.”
Justin Baird, recording secretary for the Bronx Caucus, said he and his wife live in Riverdale and that he worries most about safety at the new shelter. He said many migrants “will not assimilate into society,” such as the allegedly undocumented man who burned a woman alive on an F train on Dec. 23. When asked about the relatively low levels of crime committed by migrants compared to U.S. citizens, “One [migrant] crime is too much,” Baird said.
Baird himself is an immigrant from Canada who said he has been waiting to receive a work permit since he got married in 2022. As a teacher, he hoped he could immediately work in a school and contribute to a community, but instead, he’s stuck waiting — whereas the migrants are on the fast track, he said. “It would be nice if I could get what the people in this shelter will get,” said Baird.
Mario Nicoletto from Long Island, also a caucus member, said although the rally included several people from outside the Bronx, “We’re all New Yorkers. We’re here to help our own.”
Nicoletto said President Donald Trump’s vision of “Americanism, not globalism” should guide local policy. In his Long Island neighborhood, migrant shelters such as this one do not pop up under Republican leadership, he said.
Longtime South Bronx resident Carmen Santiago said not only politics but something like a “generational curse” seemed to prevent the city from “put[ting] native New Yorkers first.”
Santiago held a sign that said, “Dump Adams, he sold the South Bronx to the highest bidder” and said that other elected officials have repeatedly put the neighborhood in similar situations. Santiago told the Bronx Times that residents have grown so concerned that some have said they will call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when the shelter opens.
“Corruption, no transparency and incompetence — the recipe to destroy our community,” she said. “We are the sacrificial lamb.”
Reach Emily Swanson at eswanson@schnepsmedia.com or (646) 717-0015. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
