TESTING A CITY OF IMMIGRANTS

New York struggles to accommodate tens of thousands of migrants bused from other states

- SANYA MANSOOR

ALI SAYYID, FATHER OF SIX, TRIES TO QUICKLY change direction when his children hear the sound of an ice cream truck coming down a New York City street. He can't afford it. "In Afghanistan, life was good and they were eating everything," says Sayyid, who was a civil engineer before the Taliban's 2021 takeover. He fled with his family first to Brazil and then across the southern border into the U.S., an epochal journey that landed him not only in a new land, but also in its politics.

Sayyid is among more than 100,000 migrants who have arrived in New York City over the past year. It's an influx that threatens to overwhelm the carrying capacity of a city that has made opening its arms to newcomers so fundamental to its identity (see: the Statue of Liberty) that Southern and Southwestern governors set out to test it-busing tens of thousands of newly arrived migrants from Texas, Florida, and Arizona to 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

"Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to I don't see an ending to this," Mayor Eric Adams told a gathering on Sept. 6. "This issue will destroy New York City."