Migrants struggle with receiving mail in timely fashion

( NewsNation ) — More than 212,000 migrants and asylum-seekers have filtered through New York City over the past year with 64,000 new arrivals from the U.S. southern border still living in city-run shelters.

Although city officials say that they have connected 70% of migrants with taking steps toward applying for asylum or Temporary Protected Status, migrants trying to find a new life in sanctuary cities like New York, Chicago, and Denver have expressed concerns about receiving mail in a timely fashion.

While cities have no control over how the U.S. Postal Service operates, asylum seekers who have arrived in those places via buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott complain that important documents — including applications for social security cards, work permits, and paperwork regarding upcoming immigration hearings — are either arriving late or not at all, according to a report in The New York Times .

In addition to heavy mail loads at the city’s 200 migrant shelters, limits put into place by New York Mayor Eric Adams on how long asylum seekers can remain at the shelters have complicated the process of delivering mail, the report said.

For new arrivals already struggling to find work and to establish themselves in a new city, not being able to receive important documents and city identification cards has made their daily lives even more challenging, immigration attorneys say.

“They’re missing important deadlines and missing important appointments,” Allison Cutler, a supervising attorney of the immigration protection unit at New York Legal Assistance Group , told The New York Times. “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.”

Similar challenges have been felt in other cities where tens of thousands of migrants and asylum-seekers have been sent since 2022.

Migrants living in city-run shelters in Chicago have previously told NewsNation that they often see mail delivered weeks after it was scheduled to arrive. They said that city staff members hired to assist with shelter operations often struggle with communicating with new arrivals and that at times, immigrant paperwork and other documents are lost – only to surface weeks later after deadlines have been missed.

In Denver, where the city once operated 10 shelters, officials said that getting mail to those living in shelters has also been challenging.

“It’s been tricky,” Jon Ewing, spokesman for the Denver Human Services, told NewsNation.

Ewing, who said that the city is now down to running two shelters, said that the main obstacle is tracking migrants once they leave the shelters. In many cases, work permits which have been obtained through efforts provided to new arrivals by the city and local non-profits arrive after asylum seekers have left for other places to live.

In those cases, the city has partnered with not-for-profits which allow migrants to use the mailing addresses of those organizations on applications for work permits. Although those cases have not been overwhelming, Ewing acknowledges that the situation has presented obstacles.

In Chicago, city officials have told NewsNation that asylum-seekers are not tracked after they leave shelters operated by the city. As of this week, Chicago’s shelter census stands at nearly 5,500 — half of what it was when Mayor Brandon Johnson began enforcing shelter stay limits for new arrivals in March.

In New York, Adams has estimated that handling housing and providing services to new arrivals will cost the city more than $10 billion over three years.

Like other sanctuary cities, Adams has sought federal assistance to help cover costs and to expedite work authorizations for new arrivals. But with no solutions in sight, migrants are often left to fend for themselves when it comes to finding work and becoming legally authorized to work.

That means filing paperwork, which is then returned through the U.S. Mail. The New York Times report indicated that shelter officials are told to hold on to “high-priority mail” for migrants, including mail from the federal government.

City officials have also established a database that alerts migrants when mail is ready for pick-up. However, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander issued a report in the spring saying that the city does not have policies or procedures in place regarding picking up mail or personal belongings.

The report indicated that the city has said that shelter guests “are informed that their mail will be available at that site for pick-up” after migrants leave the shelter.

However, according to the New York Times report, even migrants living in shelters have difficulty collecting mail.

“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,” 28-year-old Guinea native Amadou Sadjo Barry told the New York Times. “I come to inform them, and they tell me that ‘No, you don’t have one, you have to go.’”

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