By Stephen M. Lepore For Dailymail.Com
Updated: 05:11 28 Aug 2023
- Mayor Eric Adams has opened over 200 shelters across the five boroughs to try and house the 100,000 who have arrived from the border
- Trump supporters and pro-migrant protesters fought outside his Upper East Side home, with punches thrown
- Former New York City mayoral candidate and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa was one of the main speakers at the protest and one of the many arrested
A protest against New York City’s handling of the migrant crisis resulted in protesters on both sides getting involved in a violent clash outside of Gracie Mansion on Sunday.
Former New York City mayoral candidate and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa was one of the main speakers at the protest and one of the many arrested as Trump supporters and pro-migrant protesters fought, with punches thrown.
About half of the 100 people gathered were espousing messages demanding the shelters stop and the migrants be sent away, while others were counter-protesters who also denounced what they called the ‘white supremacist NYPD.’
Sliwa spoke out against his former opponent, Democrat Mayor Eric Adams, who has opened over 200 shelters across the five boroughs to try and house the 100,000 who have arrived in the Big Apple from the southern border.
‘These migrants have jumped the queue,’ Sliwa said. ‘If I were a migrant and you gave me an opportunity to jump the queue and stay in a hotel, give me three square meals … basically give me more than homeless people born in America have or veterans who are down on their luck have – you’re damn right they’re gonna keep coming.’
He was adamant in his message of ‘Americans first, migrants back of the line!’
At one point during the protest, a woman was arrested after she attempted to burn the American flag and stomped on it on the ground.
‘We don’t need this hate! We don’t need this f**king hate! That is not what this is supposed to represent but this is what they f**king make it,’ she cried.
Sliwa – a long-time presence in New York media and politics since his founding of the ‘unarmed crime prevention’ organization – was arrested for the second time this week after leading a protest against bringing shelters to Staten Island.
He was also in custody at a protest in a closed down Queens psychiatric center two weeks ago. He told the New York Post Sunday that this was his 80th arrest.
Sliwa was released Sunday evening and spoke to DailyMail.com about the event, which he blames on both Antifa and the NYPD for not controlling the left-winger radicals.
‘I had pre-warned the police, I’d gone into the local precinct,’ he said. ‘Look, Antifa will be there, they’re gonna go on the attack, we’re gonna have elderly people there. Either you take care of it, or we’ll take care of it.’
‘Clearly they did not. People can scream, they can yell, they can do anything they want to one another, but not physically attack. When they started physically attacking, our group had to stop and defend themselves.
He claims that two elderly people, both 81, were arrested alongside him and according to Sliwa, were treated like former President Donald Trump and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani by being fingerprinted and photographed for a desk appearance ticket.
He added that one of the two elderly people arrested was a woman named Colletta, whom herself emigrated to the United States from Casablanca.
‘Nobody is opposed to immigration, as long as it was done the right way,’ said Sliwa, who told DailyMail.com he’s planning on running for mayor again in 2025. ‘Quite a few people with us were immigrants themselves.’
Sliwa – who wanted to clarify that people there with him were separate from both Antifa and ‘Trumpsters’ – was ruthless in his criticism of Adams, whom he said has shown himself unable to deal with a problem that he welcomed to New York City.
‘He asked for this immigration problem, he goaded Abbott,’ he said. ‘But in the past few months he’s been saying “No mas, No mas” and he has no plan, other than to try and ship their problem to become everybody else’s problem in the state of New York.’
The Guardian Angels founder has suggested the alternative of using Riker’s Island to give migrants a six-month transition period before being told to find their way.
‘There are empty buildings, lots of land, there’s a bridge that takes them in and out, they stay on the island six months,’ he said.
In early August, New York lawmakers announced plans to house at least 80 newly arrived migrants in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park.
The group lives in temporary housing in the park’s recreation center, which is popular with residents of the affluent and uber-liberal Williamsburg neighborhood thanks to its swimming pool and gym.
The facilities in the rec center will be not be impacted by the new residents, local representatives said in a joint statement.
Adams has also used Randall’s Island and considered Central Park to house migrants – who had been seen sleeping in their hundreds on the streets outside the Roosevelt hotel in Manhattan.
The mayor’s office warned recently that New York’s migrant shelters are at capacity and officials have said that they are in the process of discouraging those who have crossed the southern border from coming to the Big Apple.
It is estimated that nearly 10,000 migrants in New York City were bussed north by Texas’ Republican Governor Greg Abbott in the last month.
City officials say the number of migrants arriving in New York since the spring of 2022 is approaching 100,000, overwhelming a shelter system designed to hold tens of thousands fewer people.
New York City has a unique court-ordered obligation to provide emergency shelter to anyone who asks for it, but officials have said in recent weeks that the influx of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. had made it increasingly difficult to fulfill that duty.
While the number of migrants crossing the border has fallen in recent months, busloads still arrive nearly every day. City officials said that some 2,300 more migrants came to the city seeking shelter last week alone.
Adams last month dispatched emissaries to the border to hand out fliers, informing migrants that shelter space in his city is no longer guaranteed and that housing and food in New York City is expensive. It urged them to consider other U.S. cities.
The mayor’s office is yet to comment on today’s protest. On Friday, they released a statement saying they empathize with residents, but that the city is dealing with a national crisis on its own and that the sites in question are the only options left.
