The Week the Migrant Backlash Turned Into Rage

Angry neighborhood residents have checked the administration of Mayor Eric Adams at virtually every turn in its attempts to find more space to shelter the ongoing influx of migrants arriving in the city. Now, in the wake of a move to place unhoused migrants in conservative bastions of Staten Island and far southern Brooklyn, City Hall is facing the possibility of a full-scale outer-borough revolt.

In the most high-profile eruption of public anger yet, hundreds of furious protesters flooded a quiet residential street in Staten Island on Monday to demand the closure of a shelter that holds barely two dozen migrants. For two hours, one speaker after another attacked Democratic lawmakers, raised the specter of the supposed threat that migrants might pose to women and children, and shook the cobwebs off the perennial demand for the borough to separate from the rest of the city.

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