NYC Migrant Standoff Turns Terrible as 10 Outside Activists Take Action Against Media with Open Umbrellas

An ongoing standoff with migrants at a Manhattan hotel turned grisly on Wednesday after a group of about 10 outside activists used open umbrellas to stop the media from documenting the scene.

The intervention prompted several migrants to angrily confront a journalist who was filming a video for the Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV channel, with one migrant hitting the camera and knocking out its small monitor unit.

Some of the 35 migrants gathered in front of the Watson Hotel in Hell’s Kitchen also yelled at other operators in an attempt to intimidate them.

NYPD issued warnings but made no arrests.

The newspaperman whose camera was amazed, Ghassan Masood, said he had never been treated so badly in his entire career, including coverage of the Iraq war.

“In 30 years, even in war zones, I have never faced such aggression,” Massoud said.

“I know their situation is bad. I just want to tell their story, and they attacked me.”

Massoud, who usually covers the United Nations, called the migrants “aggressive”.

“One migrant threatened to hit me with a broom when the police intervened and told them that I had every right to film,” he said.

Matthew McDermott

Matthew McDermott

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Matthew McDermott

Matthew McDermott

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Migrants have been camping on the sidewalk since the weekend when they were told to move to a new migrant processing center at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

City Hall has accused activists from groups including South Bronx Mutual Aid of fomenting the confrontation, with Mayor’s spokesman Fabien Levy saying, “I don’t even understand the logic here.”

“Instead of encouraging asylum seekers to sleep in warm, temperature-controlled indoor spaces at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, these groups are encouraging migrants to sleep in tents on the streets,” he said. wrote on Monday. “The lack of reasoning here is striking.”

During an afternoon press conference Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams called the activists “some agitators who I think are doing a disservice to migrants and the children and families we move into hotels.”

Adams also said that “single grown men throughout the city live in crowded places” such as the cruise terminal.

“Children and families, we don’t want to place them in crowded places,” he said.

On Tuesday, the four migrants agreed to visit the processing center with the city’s immigration commissioner, Manuel Castro, but decided it would be better to sleep outdoors and returned to the sidewalk of the hotel.

Adams blamed the choice “on the fact that they heard from some agitators that they were going to be sent, and so we are taking them there.”

Late Wednesday afternoon, about half of the migrants at the hotel grabbed their belongings and climbed into a yellow school bus after police closed the street to eastbound traffic.

Later, they arrived at the cruise terminal, and one of them told The Post in Spanish from the bus window: “We have reached an agreement to improve the new facilities, and they will move us to a better place.”

The rest of the adherents told The Post they have no intention of leaving despite weather forecasts that predict sub-zero temperatures, including a low of 6 degrees on Friday night.

“I would 100% rather stay here on the street than go to Brooklyn,” said Jesús Colmenares, 27. “We want to be in Manhattan, where everything happens.”

The Venezuelan native said he visited the cruise terminal on Wednesday morning, adding: “I’m not going to go there and sleep to put my head on someone’s feet. That’s how close the beds were. And people are sent there from everywhere, not only from Watson.

But Colmenares also said: “I will go if they give me a work permit. We need to work, we just want to work.”