With 64,000 migrants shuttling through a warren of shelters in New York City, one of the city’s more difficult challenges is among the more unheralded: delivering the mail.
The influx of migrants from the southern border has brought a barrage of mail to the city’s more than 200 migrant shelters, overflowing the makeshift mail rooms in repurposed hotels and office buildings where the new arrivals are staying.
Some of the correspondence is critical: immigration notices or documents to apply for Social Security numbers and work authorization, documents that, if lost or delayed, would hamper the migrants’ ability to work legally in the United States.
But problems have arisen. Mail sometimes goes missing. The Postal Service has, at times, determined that mail is undeliverable at some shelters, such as the tent dormitory on Randall’s Island, according to immigration lawyers.
And with the city adopting a stricter policy that forces migrants to reapply for shelter, sometimes as often as every 30 days, migrants said they have struggled to find their mail.
Ever since New York City set up a multibillion-dollar emergency response to shelter and feed thousands of migrants two summers ago, officials have insisted that the way out of the crisis is to make migrants self-sufficient.
Helping them apply for asylum and work permits, enrolling children in schools and getting adults municipal ID cards — all, they argued, would help recent migrants become financially independent and less of a strain on city government.
But for migrants living in city shelters, the cascade effect that stems from missing a single piece of mail — such as a notice to appear in immigration court — can have devastating consequences.
“They’re missing important deadlines and missing important appointments,” said Allison Cutler, a supervising attorney of the immigration protection unit at New York Legal Assistance Group. “If it’s a court appointment, you can actually be ordered deported in your absence, which we’ve also been seeing: people who reside in shelter and they’re not getting notices of hearing from the court.”
The city is facing a formidable challenge: handling mail for more than 210,000 migrants who have entered its shelter system since 2022, a majority of whom have since left the shelters or even the city but may still be receiving mail. It is among a bevy of services the city provides free to migrants, including beds, meals, legal help and even laundry in some shelters.
Mail does find its way to many migrants, from Amazon packages to letters and gifts sent by family members in faraway countries. But in recent interviews with 20 migrants, delayed deliveries arose as a common complaint, and some said it had caused them to miss important immigration appointments.
City officials said that shelter officials hold on to “high-priority” mail for migrants, including mail from the federal government, even after the migrants are discharged. And they said they had created a centralized database to alert migrants when they have mail to pick up.
City Hall did not address questions about the delays to retrieve mail. A city comptroller report from May found that the city “does not have policies and procedures or training materials regarding mail retention or change of address.”
Some legal service providers and immigration advocates said the mail system was so unreliable that they often advised migrants to find other addresses where their mail could be sent. Some groups have begun to accept mail at their headquarters and community centers. And some volunteers have offered their own home addresses for migrants to receive government mail.
The mail issues have grown more complicated since the city began imposing 30- and 60-day limits on migrants’ shelter stays. Migrants are often relocated to other shelters when their time is up, forcing them to visit their previous shelters to retrieve mail. But they are often not allowed back in — despite city policy allowing re-entry — or are told by shelter staff that they have no mail, even if delivery confirmation receipts indicate otherwise.
Amadou Sadjo Barry, 28, from Guinea, recounted the difficulty he had in trying to retrieve a crucial letter with the details of an asylum appointment to provide his fingerprints to the federal government — an episode so frustrating that he remembers the exact dates of when it happened.
On May 1, he received an email notifying him that the letter had arrived at his shelter, on Hall Street near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He showed up at the mail room that day, and every day for more than a month, sometimes waiting for hours, only to be given the same answer: They could not find his letter.
“Each time, I go back because my phone tells me that I have mail to pick up, and I know that it’s mail that’s important,” he said. “I come to inform them, and they tell me that ‘No, you don’t have one, you have to go.’”
He was reassigned to a migrant shelter on Randall’s Island, forcing him to travel two hours to Brooklyn every day, until the letter finally surfaced on June 7. He was distraught when he opened it: He had missed his appointment, which had been scheduled for May 5.
Ms. Cutler, the lawyer from the New York Legal Assistance Group, said a similar situation had arisen with a client from Venezuela, whose work permit appears to have been delivered to his shelter even though shelter staff have been unable to find it.
“We have the U.S.P.S. tracking number and the confirmation that it was delivered to the receptionist at the front desk,” she said. “We’re still attempting to track it down, but we’re coming to the conclusion now, in all likelihood, we’re going to have to refile for a replacement.”
The process to replace a lost work permit can take months, she said.
And migrants are sometimes trapped in a Catch-22: Even to change their mailing address with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, they typically need an application receipt number that must be delivered by physical mail.
Volunteers and organizations providing services to migrants have repeatedly raised their concerns with city officials, urging them to fix what they see as a systemic issue that could derail immigration cases. City officials have acknowledged the problem, sometimes intervening to help resolve individual cases of lost mail, but have not appeared to enact any sweeping changes.
On the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a mutual aid group partnered with a bookstore whose address migrants can use to receive mail. Volunteers sort through the mail and notify people whenever they get essential papers.
“We work with a lot of people who come from places where the notion of mail is not top of mind or clear,” said Charlotte Soehner, one of the volunteers. “People are not really made aware of the importance of mail and think that the shelters can be a stable place, and then, you know, finding out they got a letter six months ago that the shelter never told them about.”
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