Latest news with #RooseveltHotel
Fox News
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Biden's border legacy: A financial burden that will last for years
We've all been there: you go out with friends, have a great time… then they leave you stuck with the bill. After four years of reckless, ruinous and arguably illegal Biden administration policies, America will be stuck with a massive border bar tab for years to come. President Donald Trump is busy keeping his promises to secure the border, remove aliens in accordance with the law, and hold noncitizen visitors and students accountable for the promises they made when getting visas to respect our country and its rules. He's been sued at every step by illegal aliens and their left-wing advocates. Lower-level federal judges – usually, but not always appointed by Democratic presidents and working in Democratic-dominated states – are ordering nationwide injunctions as a default, in cases filed on the flimsiest of legal pretexts. According to former Attorney General Bill Barr, federal courts issued a total of 27 nationwide injunctions in the entire 20th century, but they've issued 79 against Trump alone this century. As Trump tries to enforce the law, the full scope of Biden's border bar tab is coming to light. New York's Roosevelt Hotel is a formerly grand Manhattan edifice that contributed to the city's lucrative tourist trade. Biden's policies of paroling inadmissible aliens and mass releasing them at the border brought millions who went to welcoming "sanctuaries" like New York. The city not only offered free housing and other benefits to illegal and quasi-legal aliens but also rarely prosecuted them for any petty crimes they committed. Mayor Eric Adams scrambled to lease hotels and other buildings, spending around $4 billion tax dollars a year in migrant support. The Roosevelt was just one of more than 200 make-shift shelters operating at the height of the crisis. Since January 2025 – contrary to what the Biden team had been saying for four years – the Trump administration was able to reduce illegal entry at the border by more than 90%, end illegal parole programs, resume internal enforcement, and cut off federal funding of NGOs that facilitate mass migration. New York began closing its temporary shelters. The Roosevelt is due to close as a shelter in June, but as of mid-May, there are still about 2,000 "migrants" there. The hotel is owned by the government of Pakistan, whose finances are in even more dire straits than ours, and which is preoccupied by resurgent conflict with India. After a couple years of occupation by indigents from around the world, most of them unused to Western habits, the Roosevelt will need complete refurbishment before it can re-open to tourists. According to one estimate, that can cost $50,000-$90,000 per room. With over 1,000 rooms, that means over $90 million for the Roosevelt alone, not counting the common areas. That's just one of the city's rented shelters. Who is going to pay to repair them all? New York taxpayers. Shelter costs are only part of Biden's border bar tab. Half a million unaccompanied alien children were let in. All should be attending school unless they are working illegally or being exploited by the supposed "sponsors" to whom Biden's Health and Human Services handed them. That means public school, and you're paying for it. Half a million kids at $18,000 a year, the national average, is $9 billion a year, of which states will pay more than 90%. The healthcare costs for absorbing millions more indigents into Medicaid and Medicare are yet to be known. But given that the average alien let in under Biden is significantly less educated and skilled than the average American, expect the worst. Lower-skilled, lower-paid workers are more likely to be enrolled in government subsidized health insurance programs. In 2024, average health care spending per person was more than $13,000. Assuming that only one in five illegal immigrants let in under Biden relies on government or charity healthcare, that's $26 billion a year. Then there's crime. Among the millions of economic migrants Biden let in were many thousands of career criminals and gang members. Among the thousands housed at the Roosevelt Hotel were some pimps, thieves and gang-bangers. The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua ran crews from there who mugged, stabbed and shot other migrants or local New Yorkers. They looted stores and assaulted cops. New York City spent $9.2 billion on criminal justice in 2020, and you can bet it has gone up since then. "Progressives" will say the answer is to stop prosecuting offenders, but in recent years that recipe has only resulted in more dangerous streets and unhealthy living across our major cities. Belatedly, Democrats are electing candidates to office who enforce criminal law. This is good, but it will cost more money in police, prosecutors, judges and jails. Biden's border bar tab is still racking up, as all these costs will continue until one of two things happens: an alien is removed, or he wins the legal right to remain and then pays more in taxes than he and his family consume in benefits. Both will take time, if they happen at all.
Express Tribune
12-05-2025
- Business
- Express Tribune
'Govt considering joint venture for Roosevelt Hotel'
Minister for Defence Khawaja Asif informed the National Assembly on Monday that the government is considering running the Roosevelt Hotel in New York through a joint venture to ensure long-term economic benefit. Responding to a question during the Question Hour, the minister said that the Roosevelt Hotel is a prime property located in the heart of New York City. "It is a 19-storey building with access from two sides, and it holds a central and strategic location," he noted, adding that such a property is unmatched in the city. He further stated that while selling the hotel might provide short-term financial relief or help in debt repayment, the government is aiming for a joint venture that would generate sustainable returns over time. "This approach will help Pakistan benefit from the property without losing ownership," he said, reaffirming the government's resolve to make prudent decisions regarding national assets abroad.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Thousands of migrants still living at NYC's historic Roosevelt Hotel — despite ticking clock for shelter to close
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways When does it end? Nearly 2,000 migrants are still being housed in the historic Roosevelt Hotel — despite the city insisting the makeshift shelter will be shuttering next month. The 100-year-old landmark in Midtown became a symbol of the Big Apple's migrant crisis as it became the intake center for the more than 230,000 asylum seekers from the US border who flocked to the five boroughs since 2022. As many as 2,900 people were also housed there on taxpayer dime at the peak of the crisis, and the number of residents has only dwindled to around 1,800 as of Wednesday. Built in 1924, the once luxurious Roosevelt Hotel has been a migrant shelter since 2022, and still houses nearly 2,000. Robert Miller That's even as Mayor Eric Adams has all but declared the migrant crisis over in February, when he announced the hotel's impeding closure. Sources said at the time the hotel-turned-shelter would be empty by June. But City Hall continues to be vague on just when the Roosevelt will be shut down as a shelter — saying on Wednesday only that the transition should happen sometime in June. People being housed at the hotel told The Post they have been offered help to get out of the state, but haven't been given a date by which they have to pack up and leave, causing confusion and anguish. 'It's in God's hands,' Sandra, a 34-year-old Venezuelan migrant, said Wednesday. 'I don't know what will happen to me next. My hope is that I can find a job and not rely on anyone for housing and work.' Juan Gabriel, 22, also from Venezuela, said he's unsure when or where he'll have to move. 'They offered to send us to other states, one was somewhere near the border with Canada, but I don't want to go,' he said. 'I don't think I'll be able to find work there.' The hotel at 45 East 45th Street is one of 171 sites still used as shelters for the asylum seekers, whose numbers are dwindling as President Trump's immigration policies slow the flow of migrants into the country. The dip in new arrivals has prompted the Adams administration to close the massive tent encampments at Randall's Island and Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field, and announce a string of other shelter closures. A City Hall spokesperson said Wednesday the administration had already closed 59 shelters. During the week ending on May 4, the Big Apple saw just over 100 new arrivals, City Hall officials said, down radically from the height of nearly 4,000 migrants per week who poured into the city during January 2024. New York post front page after Mayor Eric Adams vowed to shut down the Roosevelt Hotel as a migrant shelter. New York Post Migrants wait in line outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan to check in with the city earlier this year. Michael Nagle 'Despite our success in helping over 195,000 migrants leave the city's care and take their next steps toward self-sufficiency, we still have over 39,000 migrants in our care, and any implication that we are now out of the woods is simply false,' City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia said in a statement. 'And as we previously stated, the Roosevelt — and two other migrant shelters — will be closing next month.' The conversion of the historic hotel stood as a symbol of the strain of the migrant crisis. Built in 1924, the Roosevelt, named after President Teddy Roosevelt, was once the peak of Big Apple luxury. It was the site of the first broadcast of 'Auld Lang Syne' by Guy Lombardo and his Orchestra and housed the presidential campaign headquarters of former Gov. Thomas Dewey during the 1948 race, remembered for the Chicago Tribune's front-page 'Dewey Defeats Truman' gaffe. When a massive wave of migrants began to stream across the southern US border in the spring 2022, the clientele at the Roosevelt took on a different look as the processing center for newcomers to the sanctuary city and housing nearly 3,000 in rooms once reserved for VIPs. It also became a hotbed of criminal activity, with the Venezuela street gang Tren de Aragua recruiting at the hotel and orchestrating moped robbery crews from within its walls, police sources have said. A 10-year-old migrant boy uses a laptop after a school pickup outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. Michael Nagle Most recently, a 12-year-old pintsized gangbanger accused of being the ringleader of a Central Park robbery crew and part of a mob that swarmed two NYPD cops in Times Square over the weekend was listed as a resident. But problems with some of the Roosevelt's shelter residents predated the baby-faced troublemaker. In September 2023, two separate assaults sent cops to the hotel, with one migrant charged with strangling his girlfriend and another stabbed by his partner during a scuffle. Three migrants living at the hotel were charged in a $5,300 shoplifting spree in February 2024, as were some of the mob who ganged up on two cops in Times Square in January 2024. The newfound rep of the Roosevelt Hotel got so bad that most of the migrants living there griped about the gangbangers and criminal in their midst. Migrant parents wait for their children to be dropped off from school outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. Michael Nagle 'The reputation of this hotel is all over TikTok,' Ecuadorean native Fernanda Rosa said in October. 'We all know what the hotel is known for.' Ana, a mother of three from Venezuela, said the clock was ticking for the Roosevelt shelter. 'The shelter isn't perfect, but I've been grateful to have a place to live,' she told The Post outside the hotel Wednesday. 'I don't really know what happens next.'
Arab News
18-04-2025
- Business
- Arab News
Pakistan reviews privatization options for New York's Roosevelt Hotel
KARACHI: Pakistan's privatization board on Friday reviewed various options to sell off the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, a long-held property of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), as part of ongoing efforts to divest loss-making state assets under an International Monetary Fund-backed reform agenda. The 19-story Roosevelt Hotel, located in midtown Manhattan, has been closed since 2020 and is owned by the Roosevelt Hotel Corporation, a subsidiary of PIA. Its fate has been under discussion for years amid attempts to generate funds from the government's assets. The Privatization Commission mentioned its deliberations in a statement, saying that it discussed various transaction options developed by its financial adviser — a consortium led by Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc. (JLL) — and finalized recommendations to be presented to the Cabinet Committee on Privatization (CCOP). 'Various transaction structure options developed by the Financial Adviser ... for privatization of Roosevelt Hotel Corporation (RHC), New York were discussed,' the statement read. However, it did not divulge further details. The Roosevelt Hotel is one of the assets included in the first phase of Pakistan's privatization roadmap, which also features the sale of national flag carrier PIA and Zarai Taraqiati Bank (ZTBL). The government aims to complete these transactions within a year. Pakistan is working to privatise several state-owned enterprises as part of structural reforms under a $7 billion loan program with the IMF. Many of these entities, including PIA, have long struggled with debt, mismanagement and operational inefficiencies. The Roosevelt Hotel was earlier used to house asylum seekers under a temporary agreement with New York City but remains a financial burden on PIA, which is itself undergoing a separate privatization process. The government is seeking to sell a 51-100 percent stake in the airline and will invite expressions of interest next week.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
DOJ criminal probe targeting NYC migrant shelters sparks fear over what's next in Trump crackdown
NEW YORK — A criminal investigation by Trump's Justice Department targeting migrants who sought asylum in New York City has spread alarm about a potentially dark new chapter in the president's brutal crackdown on immigration. The government, in a criminal subpoena, has demanded a Midtown hotel hand over the names, dates of birth and other details about migrant residents, sources told the Daily News. It wasn't immediately clear if other shelters have been targeted, despite media reports saying the Roosevelt Hotel and other locations were involved. The feds are potentially also scrutinizing government officials involved in multimillion-dollar contracts the city entered into with hotels to deal with an influx of more than 200,000 asylum seekers beginning in spring 2022, according to a report in the Guardian. Josh Goldfein, an attorney for the Legal Aid Society, said the information demands represented a catchall attempt by the Trump administration to scare as many people as possible, the result of which will be that people have nowhere else to go. 'They've been very clear that they were coming after New York regardless of whether that accomplishes their supposed goals,' the attorney said. 'No one could defend this as a targeted approach to identify people who represent a danger. It's retaliatory and meant to frighten people.' The investigation is being handled by the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office, which referred The Daily News to Department of Justice headquarters, indicating that senior officials in Washington, D.C., initiated the probe. The move comes as the Trump administration has sharpened its focus on the Empire State, home to one of the largest immigrant populations in the country, with Trump's border czar on Wednesday threatening Gov. Kathy Hochul with doubling the number of federal immigration agents in New York if she didn't fall in line with the administration's policy objectives. While Homan was up in Albany, lawyers for the federal government were in Manhattan Federal Court defending immigration authorities' detention of Columbia University graduate student and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil based on his political views regarding the conflict in Gaza. The probe also comes amid a report on CNN that President Donald Trump plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which would give him sweeping powers to detain and deport citizens en masse if they're determined to be from an enemy state. Last year, he vowed to invoke the wartime law to 'dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil.' Anti-immigrant politicians on the right have baselessly alleged migrant hotels in New York to be hotbeds of gang and drug activity. In excusing the federal government's clawing back more than $80 million in FEMA grant money from New York City, lawyers for the Trump administration claimed the city was funding 'illegal alien hotels.' They've claimed, without evidence, that The Roosevelt, which served as a primary intake center for new migrants arriving in the city, was being used as a base of operations for Venezuelan gang members. Luba Cortes, the lead immigration organizer at Make the Road New York, told The News she worried that Trump's actions and the mayor's apparent willingness to cooperate, outlined in a deal to dismiss Adams's federal corruption case, have jeopardized the city's sanctuary policies and other protections. 'Right now, we are in very difficult and harrowing times,' Cortes said. '(Migrants) shouldn't be used as scapegoats for the Adams administration or the Trump administration.' On Thursday, a source confirmed to the Daily News that The Hotel Chandler on E. 31st St. was targeted with the subpoena. The shelter, however, does not house asylum seekers, though it has a name similar to a nearby migrant shelter. Sources who spoke to The News Thursday believed the feds may have mixed up The Chandler with the Candler building on W. 42nd St., an office space converted into a migrant shelter for single adults. A brawl between a group of asylum seekers and two New York Police Department officers outside that facility in January 2024 became a major political flashpoint in the immigration debate among right-wing politicians, who held it up as proof of a supposed migrant crime wave in the city. Manuel Castro, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, emphasized that the city's sanctuary laws have not changed despite the federal government's probe into the hotels and encouraged migrants to continue to send their kids to school and seek care at hospitals. 'To our immigrant New Yorkers, including our undocumented immigrant neighbors, friends, family members, know there are many people in our city, your fellow New Yorkers, that deeply care about you,' he said. In comments to reporters Thursday, Adams said the feds hadn't told City Hall anything about the probe. Adams expressed concern for shelter staffers but did not comment on the residents themselves. 'The workers should not be getting caught up in the politics of it,' Adams said. 'And that is who my heart goes out to. And I say to them, I'm sorry you're going through all of that we're seeing.' An attorney for Hotel Chandler did not respond to The News' requests for comment.
