Migrants being stored in fancy New York City hotels didn’t seem to make much sense, did it? Why would these hotels willingly surrender business from their high class patrons to take in migrants?
Now we have our answer, and it’s the same answer it always is: money.
A former hotel worker told Fox News on Monday that the hotels involved in the resettlement of illegal immigrants “are making lots of money through New York City’s shelter program for illegal immigrants”, the Daily Caller reported.
The worker, Carlos Arellano, said that “everybody’s loving this because the money is just going around and around.”
In fact, the report says that the average price of a hotel room increased from $277.92 in 2022 to $301.61 in 2023. Additionally, over 130 hotels have participated in the city’s shelter program by accommodating migrants.
Arellano added: “When you walk into hotels to work at them, the main hotel staff is not doing anything, they are standing around, but yet they still charge the city for any little thing they can.”
“And when you see 10 workers on the first floor of the lobby of the hotel, only two of them are really working, meanwhile the hotel will still charging the city for all 10 staff members, and you really don’t know what’s going on in there until you work in one of these places, but the costs just keep being driven up by the hotels,” he said.
“I like to tell people when you see someone like a politician on the news saying ‘Oh, we regret, this, we wish this wasn’t happening,’ it’s all lies. Everything from the politicians to the owners of the hotels, everybody is loving this because the money is just going around and around.”
Hotels participating in the city’s migrant shelter program are paid between $139 and $185 per night, per room, whether occupied or not, the report from the Daily Caller said.
Facing budget constraints due to the cost of housing migrants, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams has implemented cuts, including closing libraries on Sundays and a hiring freeze for the NYPD.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported encounters with illegal immigrants rose from 1.6 million in fiscal year 2021, to 2.2 million in 2022, and 2 million in 2023, with 1.1 million so far in 2024. You can watch the full appearance on Fox News here.