City Limits – Ramon Villazana’s family needed to leave the Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center (HERRC) at the Holiday Inn in Lower Manhattan, where the city has housed immigrant families with children since last year, at the end of January—when their 60 day-stay expired under the Adams administration’s shelter deadline policy for newly arrived immigrants.

After losing his construction job a few weeks earlier, he considered moving to Philadelphia—where he had lived after leaving Venezuela, and before coming to the Big Apple—or keep trying in New York. And while the city offers subsidized travel out of town for immigrants in shelter who want to relocate elsewhere, he said his family decided to leave on their own because he was told at the HERRC that it would take about 10 days to get the tickets for him, his wife, and his 3-year-old daughter.

On Jan. 9, the first evictions of migrant families with children under City Hall’s broader shelter policy began, with some 40 families who were scheduled to leave that day.

“It’s very concerning,” said Isabella Rieke, Communications Manager for Advocates for Children. “These transfers are making it almost impossible for kids to stay in the same school.”