 New York City, it's your mayor, Eric Adams. Welcome to the Gist of Dundcast. Let's get to it. I'm really excited about our podcast. I think it's really important that instead of just sound bites that we're able to really go into the crevices of our administration and talk about these real issues and actually allow New Yorkers to have a firsthand look inside and behind the lines of government so they could understand how the government is actually operating and how do we get stuff done in a real way. And I'm joined today by three leaders who have played a hands-on role in managing the crisis in a way that meets both the needs of the asylum seekers and the people of New York City. At the same time, they're making sure that our social services infrastructure doesn't buckle under the pressure of serving so many newcomers. These are three individuals that I have a deep level of respect for because of their commitment, dedication, not only with this administration but what they have done for this city and country. You can't talk about the country without an ex-marine. I was really happy to get Zachary Isko whose hair, he's crisis tested from the Iraq War to Hurricane Sandy to leading our emergency management relief efforts in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic last fall during Hurricane Fiona. And the second guest, I don't know if he ever knows how to frown, Dr. Ted Long, always on his A-game. He is the perpetual caffeine person. But I saw him and I was impressed during COVID-19. Led New York City's world-class test and trace program, Dr. Long leads operations for our city's humanitarian emergency relief and recovery centers. You may know them as Herks and he just brings a wealth of experience but also the right energy to a job this complicated. But when I put together the team, it was important for me to have people who have gone through a lot, to help people who are going through a lot. And at the heart of that is our office of the Immigrant and Affairs Commissioner, Manuel Castro. He came here to this country as a child and grew up in Sunset Park. In Flatbush. Commissioner Castro has led some of the country's largest immigrant advocacy coalitions and now runs the agency that supports 3.2 million immigrants in this great city of ours. And I want to really just open up this conversation with numbers that people must really understand these numbers. When I came in office on January 1st, 2022, we had 45,000 people that were actually in our shelter system. In a one-year period, we witnessed in 2022 a 43,000, close to 44,000 people who went through our system in just that one year. Commissioner Castro, I really wanted to start with you because you went through this. Your dreamer, you arrived here with your mom. You know what a person is thinking about when they come across. Can you just talk about that personal journey? And I saw that when you and I were together in El Paso and every once in a while, I would look over at you and it appears as though there was just personal feeling that you were going through when you saw some of those young people. That's who you were. And that is why you bring so much passion to this. But just bring us into what this experience is like for asylum seeker and a migrant. Mr. Mayor, I came here when I was five years old with my mother and we went through everything those early years, including staying with family, including my parents not having work, you know, in getting very little support. At that time, really the city or no government was helping families like ours. It was very common to, you know, acts other family members who were already here for support. And that's exactly what drives my work as the commissioner of immigrant affairs. Every time I see a family, especially children, I wonder what they're going through. Have they had food? Have they had any support? And so I reach out and you're right. When I was a border, it was incredibly surreal, you know, to see people sleeping in the street. Many of them had not spoken to anyone. And what we're doing in New York is so different. And I want to make sure that everyone knows this. This is historic. You know, just how we read about Ellis Island in textbooks, you know, we're gonna read about this, what we're doing here. And I think we're on the right side of history. And I'm just proud to be the part of this team. You are correct when you state that we've romanticized Ellis Island. We've romanticized coming through. But those are real moments in the same narrative, the same needs were present when those early Italians or early Irish or early Germans or early Jewish, and when they came here, it was the same atmosphere of uncertainty, unfamiliarity, unsure of families are struggling, scared. And we're seeing that today. And I know, Zach, when you look out for locations, how did we identify the places where we were going to house not only the emergency, the Hurks that we opened, four Hurks, 81 emergency hotels, you and your team had to overnight go to picking up these issues, you know, bring us into that. Yeah. When you asked this question about how do we cite places when we put together an interagency task force for multiple agencies? It's us. It's a lot of folks from City Hall. You know, we have Deputy Mayor Anne Williams, Isam initially jumped in, really helping sort of lead a lot of these efforts, along with Molly Schaefer and a whole host of others. But we have the FDNY, DOB, DDC, New York City Emergency Management. And we sort of do a lot of brainstorming. We try and look at a host of city sites. And we've looked at everything. We've looked at cruise ships. We've looked at hotels. We've looked at parks. We've looked at parking lots like Orchard Beach. And the fact is, is unfortunately, there's just not really great places to do this. And so part of the process is identifying what are the issues with each of these places? And then what do we need to do to mitigate those problems? Whether it's an issue of transportation, an issue of location, an issue of infrastructure. But it's a pretty robust process that we have to go through. And this team has now looked at probably over 120 different locations across the city that include commercial conversions and all the above that I've mentioned. And how we look early in the year where we open up the Randall's Island site, we move the shifted locations. And how do you determine what's the best way and how long does it take to open sites? And I also want to emphasize what I enjoyed most about the team members. We're not afraid to say, hey, let's do it different. That's why I started my time in office saying I'm perfectly imperfect. I'm not gonna run around here like I'm perfect, but we are dedicated. That's important. So first off, as I said, there's no perfect sites. And every site has its issue. And I think a lot of folks love pointing out what all the issues are with each of the sites that we move into. Generally it takes us seven to 10 days to open a site, but there's months of work that have to go into it. So the Brooklyn cruise terminal, there's a lot of negotiations with the Coast Guard, with the state, with the Port Authority, with unions that we had to navigate to move in there. Randall's Island, it was not available when we first started looking at sites. And so a lot of folks know we initially started out in Orchard Beach. We were very well aware that there was potential flooding issues out there. We knew that was something we were gonna have to mitigate. We didn't have any other place to go at that point. And I will never forget standing in a puddle out there. My phone started ringing. And my phone said, Eric Adams. And sir, I was pretty sure I was gonna be looking for a job in about 48 hours. I picked up the phone and I walked away from the group. And I think all of them were bracing for me to about, I was probably gonna be the sixth commissioner of emergency management in a year. And you just said, you know, what's the move? What do we need to do? You know, don't worry about the past. Don't worry about these mistakes. What's the right move? And we made the decision then that, you know, we knew at that point in time, Randall's Island was open. We're able to do the math to know that it was actually gonna save us money because of the mitigation things that we'd have to put in place out in Orchard Beach. And so we made that move, but no location is perfect. Brooklyn cruise terminal is not perfect. The hotels were opening up are not perfect. And each piece, each herk, each shelter is a puzzle piece in of itself that we need to solve for to make it work for the population we're serving. Well said. And you know what I was surprised to learn that opening a shelter on average takes two years. Yes sir. And we had to open herks, a number of herks, five herks. And then you think about the 81 other hotels. We had to, we had to, you know, really compact this all into a year. And you know, as a Marine, you know better than anyone, when you're in the field of a battle, you have to compromise. And it's totally different from sitting back somewhere and going through just some intellectual exercise. And you know, you brought out that Marine energy and doing so. There's a lot of conversation about the Watson Hotel. Explain that move for us and to the public. What happened at the Watson and why did we make the pivot that we did? So we've now opened up 81 shelters and Gary Jenkins and Esteem have done a remarkable job over at DHS and I think total about 85, 86 hotels. And the fact is there's just not a lot of hotels left for us to go into. Some of it is based on the rates that hotel owners want to charge us. A lot of hotel owners may not want us to convert their hotels into herks or shelters. And so there's a limited number of hotels and we need hotels primarily for taking care of families. We're also seeing a large number of the folks that were coming here, our families with young children. And so the priority for us is finding places to put families with kids. And so part of this move was we knew we could put single adult males into a congregate facility. So we looked for places that we could open up a large congregate facility where we could do a lot of services in one place and that was Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. But that meant converting the Watson Hotel, taking the single adult males that were out of there, moving them to this other facility so we can now convert that to families with children. So important. And it's unfortunate that there were those who were stating we were simply been inhumane and displacing those single adult males. But when we went to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, when we walked through, what did we see, Manny? What happened when we walked through? Look, it was a facility that many of the sound seekers who, even those who were at first refusing to come are now are saying this is fantastic, you know? And they spoke to you directly and they said, listen, we thank New York, we thank you for what you're doing. We're looking for support and we're looking to work. Every single person we come across says, we're looking to work and contribute back to the city that has already given us so much. And people think because a temporary pause is at the border that this has stopped. Since January 1st, we received 12,000 additional asylum seekers, 12,000 in one month. Dr. Long, what services are we providing? Because people don't even realize how much we are provided in the city that goes beyond the call of duty. Yeah, that's right. And I would start by saying we're dedicated and we listen and that's how we built out everything that we've built out. I'm a primary care doctor. My job is to listen to people and to help them. And that's exactly the approach that we've taken for all of the asylum seekers that have come into our city. So the first thing I want to say is the asylum seekers that have come into our city, the journey here as many can share more about, it's hell for them. They've seen people die along the way they've been through the jungle. If they have their children with them, I'm the father of two small children myself. It is almost an unimaginable challenge to get all the way here from where they started and with their family especially. So what we've done is we've spent a lot of time listening and at any of our emergency humanitarian centers, all of the services that we've built out are based on what people tell us they need and what people tell us they need to get back on their feet. So for example, you come into one of our new, one of our emergency humanitarian centers like the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. You come in, people have told us they need medical care. Many haven't seen a doctor in many years. We have 24-7 medical care at our sites. People coming to us obviously speak different languages. 90% of our frontline staff at our Herks or emergency centers, humanitarian centers, speak Spanish. They also speak Creole, French, and a variety of other languages. People also tell us that when they arrive, they haven't washed their clothes in some time. We provide laundry services at all of our sites. People tell us that they're hungry and especially at our family-oriented emergency humanitarian centers, you can't have a conversation about what you want or need if your kid is next to you hungry. You have to make sure that your family is ready to have the conversation before you can really be serious about where you want to spend the next several years. So immediately upon entry, we offer you compassion. We offer you meals. We offer you people to talk with, to share what your needs are, and we do everything we can to make sure that we're meeting your needs. But then we go beyond that, too, to offer a variety of other things at our sites. We offer reconnection services, too. That's because people that have come to New York City that they're trying to get somewhere else a lot of the time. So, you know, every day, we're able to find out where people want to go and able to buy them tickets to get where they're trying to go, whether that's to Chicago, to other parts of the country, you name it. And then when they're with us, to make sure that we're able to have that conversation with them so that we can effectively help them to complete their journey. At our sites, we also get a lot of feedback. And as you always like to say, sir, we pivot and shift. We started off, for example, providing one sandwich per person for more meal for dinner. Over time, we learned that not everybody wanted one sandwich per day. So, we ratcheted that down. And for dinners, we decided the best way to find out what people want is literally to just ask them. We did a survey. We had a guest rate every single meal. And it turns out from people that are coming to us from Senegal to Venezuela, it turns out that they rated the same meals at low scores. It was the roast beef. Nobody likes roast beef. And then some of the meals everybody seemed to enjoy. So, we've pivoted and shifted over time to even something as simple as food. That's how you make somebody feel welcome. And we've really made a really dedicated effort to use your words to make sure that we're doing everything in our power and working very, very hard to make everybody feel welcome in our city. No, good stuff, good stuff. Mr. Mayor, if I can, and Dr. Long and his team are always asking for feedback. Last night, I mean, we're on the phone and he asks for feedback because he wants to know how to improve. And if I may, this is why it is upsetting that some individuals spread misinformation out there about what these perks are. They're calling them detention camps which they're absolutely not. And it's creating fear among immigrants from accessing these services that are so critical. I mean, you know, it's making people perhaps leaping the streets when they don't have to. Right? So, I want to give a lot of credit to Dr. Long, his team and everyone involved in these perks because they're absolutely not detention camps. They're dignified and they are really saving people's lives. No, so true. And I think that's a great point that you're raising. To put fear in the hearts of those who need services, we prevented them from getting the care that they deserve. And it's just, it is counterproductive. You know, Dr., you mentioned some of those services. How do you make them available? And what work went into providing and securing those services that we have? We've pivoted and shifted from day one. So as we've, through listening, figured out what people need, we've built out services to meet them where they are. So another good example of this is children coming in with families. Again, the children, we spent a lot of time at our sites. I've seen a lot of children come into the row, the steward, our emergency humanitarian centers. The children look terrified when they arrive here. They've been through an incredible experience getting here. They're scared, they're anxious, they're depressed. Their journey is, again, almost unimaginable to think what they've had to go through little children. So what we've done is we've really had a concerted effort to make sure that we're putting services together to help them. A lot of these children, by the way, in many of the countries they're coming from, less than half have had life-saving vaccines, less than half. So at the row, at the steward hotel and at our navigation center, my teams have provided more than 4,600 vaccinations. That's 4,600 diseases prevented just among children. And just goes to show that we can really make a difference for these children. Other examples are that we've, immediately when families come to us, we enroll these children in our DOE schools. And that's another example of how we've set up services. I remember it was funny, on the first day we started to do this, we had one brave person from DOE that came to enroll students. And there was a line all the way around the hallway. Everybody was ready for school that day. So DOE brought in a ton more people. And now, when I saw this last week, the reason I know all of this matters is if you go in front of the row hotel, at 7 a.m., any day of the week, instead of seeing the children that I saw that were scared, anxious, depressed when they were coming to New York City, they have smiles wrapped all the way around their faces as they're getting on the buses. And it's being 7 to 8 a.m. in front of the row hotel is one of the most powerful experiences you can have. That is amazing. And I remember when we went to one of the locations of seeing DOE there, healthcare, all of these different services. And when we were in El Paso, you just see that right away. But we saw the people in El Paso really wanted to help. It's a beautiful city. And as I continued to state, it was unfair to El Paso. It was unfair to Chicago, Washington. This is a national problem. And the cities who are carrying the weight of the problem, it's unfair to those cities. We need to come together and make sure that it doesn't continue to happen this way. And Commissioner Castro, when you look at the services that are provided, how do you believe it helped these specific families? Well, like Dr. Long is sharing. They're really life-saving services, absolutely. And with people that have been through so much trauma, it's important to have a lot of compassion and be careful about not exacerbating that. And Mr. Mayor, you toured the navigation center when we first launched. And you saw the amount of effort that went into this. Not just city agencies, but also nonprofit partners who are there serving asylum seekers. And I have witnessed firsthand the amount of compassion and care that city employees have for asylum seekers. Everything from health services to education services, to legal orientations for people to understand what's next in their journey. And we want people to continue to come forward and use these services. Otherwise, the situation will get worse. People might get ordered removed, that is deported, or people might go without their medication. Just yesterday, Dr. Long and I, when I took the bus with a number of asylum seekers for them to see the Herc for themselves, I met people who were HIV positive, who were diabetic, that needed insulin, people who would have gone without those services if they had remained in the street. And so it is very serious. And I see it for myself. Dr. Long's team, Sac's team, everyone involved, I give them so much credit because they're working day in, day out, doing everything they can to support asylum seekers. And we often don't see that in the president. We don't see that out there. I want to change that. I want to make sure they see how much work goes into this. You know, it's interesting, you had people who stood on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and stated that it's inhumane for people to go to the Herc where they had all the services, a warm atmosphere, a place where you had a bathroom, you could take a shower, you would get food to eat. They stood there and they stated it is better for people to sleep here on the sidewalk in the cold without a shower, without a place to have clean clothing. It's just, you know, you have to look back and ask what is the real agenda here that you would tell people not to go to a place where you could get all the services that you, that are accessible to you. And finding that place, I thought, I believe, Zach, you did an amazing job of finding a terminal. You know, tell us about some of the options we've considered and turned down because I'm sure you had to go through a lot. You said over a hundred you visited, so there must have been some interesting places that you said, no, this is not going to fit. Yeah, so it's a whole variety of reasons. I mean, some of them, we're looking at commercial conversions. So are there commercial spaces we can convert? Sometimes those fall apart in the negotiation. Sometimes there's issue structural issues. We've looked at a bunch of armories. Sometimes there's asbestos issues that need to be abated. Sometimes there's environmentals or problems with the HVAC systems that would need millions of dollars. There's a huge warehouse in Brooklyn city storage filled with racks. It costs about $3 million in about three months of work to move all these racks out of there, these storage racks. We've looked at, so there's really no end. We've looked at a lot of different park space to put up tents, problems with tents is there's a lot of infrastructure you have to build and that gets very expensive. We've looked at other armories where we'd have to make decisions to displace community programming. And you have to then sort of evaluate what's the impact on the community. Even Brooklyn cruise terminal, we looked at Brooklyn cruise terminal last August, September, October. We would have to displace the cruise industry and that's money and that's jobs and that's economic activity for the city. Timing wasn't right there. Randall's Island, we looked at initially there was a lot of concerts and a lot of seasonal use that ended Columbus Day. So it became available Columbus Day. So everything is different and it's really this multi-dimensional puzzle piece that you're looking at for every single one of these locations. And it's fascinating that people don't realize that this is a puzzle and every piece impacts on another piece. As you pointed out, here we had the cruise terminal we had to think about how is this going to impact cruise season and we had to find that gap and move in pivoting and shifting is at the heart. And I think the legacy of this administration is how we took crises and it was a commercial said never let them see you sweat. There was in a moment that I saw this team sweat. We woke up every day saying this is the crisis and we're ready to meet it face on. And from the COVID crisis, I remember those early morning calls that we were going through but we ended feeling as though we got this. We're going to find a way to bring New Yorkers over the finish line. And that says a lot. And I know you had to be concerned about the congregate settings and COVID. How did we we did the vaccines? What other precautions were available for us? Yeah, so for the congregate, for our congregate settings, what we've done at any of our emergency humanitarian centers is we've had a required COVID test before anybody comes in. So we know, for example, when I was at Brooklyn cruise terminal earlier today, I knew looking around everybody in the terminal there, that everybody had had a negative COVID test within the last several days. We retested everybody that was at the Watson before they as they were coming over. And then, you know, in New York City, we wanted to really go above and beyond as we have for COVID. So that if you do develop symptoms, you do have a positive test for COVID, we immediately isolate you to keep you safe and we've had no outbreaks or anything like that. But more than just isolate you, we're going to treat you. We've had a lot of problems with COVID, but I think it's because we've had a very rigorous approach. And you know, what's interesting is we said a few months ago that we are running out of space. We're now at a point, we ran out of space. So when people say this is unconventional, what you are doing, and it is unconventional. Yeah, sorry, sorry. If I may on the running out of space, I mean, about a month ago, when there's a fire, we worked with the Red Cross to place people in hotels. We actually ran out of host health space that night in Manhattan. And you know, I mean, when we talk about running out of space, it's real. Right, right. And that's a great point you raised because using emergency hotels in spaces is part of the everyday usage of a city. Being able to have an emergency location and what you do during those fires and other entities, we have depleted those emergency locations. I remember you calling that night and saying we have to find some alternative methods. But we've done it, night after night, day after day, crisis after crisis. We showed why this team has come together to serve and to protect the people of the city. Mr. Mayor, it's important to know that this is happening because the Trump administration destroyed the asylum-seeking system. And instead of working to fix the immigration system, we took several steps backwards. So now we're dealing with consequences. You stepped in and provided the national leadership we needed to call for comprehensive immigration reform, to call for a national strategy on this. And I know I appreciate that. I know the immigrant community appreciates that. And I think the entire country is watching us. And I think we're seeing what we're doing. And I think we're setting the example that we need to set for everyone else. Thank you. And I believe you're right. Sometimes when you're living in history, you don't realize that this history is going to be reviewed. Our children are going to be writing book reports. They're going to be debates, conversations about this moment. Where were we when there was a crisis where we were seeking the same dream we all sought, the American dream. And we should be proud that we are doing everything possible for people to obtain that dream. So Mr. Mayer, as you said before in New York City, our compassion is infinite. And what we've seen in the asylum seekers coming into our city is that they really have been through a tremendous amount of trauma in their journey to get here. And when people have experienced trauma, they want to find community and to want to have that community be their support. And through us being able to provide the services we've been able to provide and bring people together and help them form that community, we've seen some amazing things happen. So for example, at Randall's Island when Commissioner Iskall and I were there, we saw that we had asylum seekers come in from Senegal, from Venezuela, from other countries, and they naturally form their own communities. And one night, because they always were sitting together for dinner, things like that, they decided to have right around the World Cup, they decided to have a soccer game. So that warm summer night, they went outside and there was a game of Venezuela against Senegal. And it just showed us the power of what we in New York City have been able to do with our infinite compassion and it was a glimmer of hope for all these people to take the next step in their journeys. I love that. That's a great story. And I cannot thank you enough. I said it at my state of the city that I love this team and I know that you love the people of this city. And that's what it's going to take. It's going to take a level of love and commitment. And not only as you are the leaders, but you're your staff. I see your team members out in the street. They are so dedicated in commitment. They give me a pump every time I see them because they're out there. They're ready to get it. It's challenging. They've been through several years of COVID. All of us are dealing with the strains of COVID, but in spite of that they've reached down deep and they're able to bring us over the finish line. So listen, thank you so much for being a part of the team. New York is a better place because of what you are doing, what you have done and what we will do together. Thank you very much. Thank you. And this is the information I wanted to share today. I hope to see you for another episode of Get Stuff Done Cast.