Illegal immigrants reportedly trashing taxpayer-funded hotels in NYC
Row NYC employee Felipe Rodriguez joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss how migrants have treated the hotel during their stay and why he doesn't feel safe at work anymore.
An employee at a luxury New York City hotel housing illegal immigrants revealed he is now on disability from an injury sustained while attending to a room trashed by migrant guests.
Row NYC employee Felipe Rodriguez joined "Fox & Friends First" Thursday to discuss how migrants have created a "mess" of the establishment and are wasting fresh food as he fears the broader impact on community safety.
Rodriguez, who interacts regularly with the migrants in his role, was told to deliver a small refrigerator to a room when he injured his knee navigating the "cluttered" area.
"We got people who are… getting drunk, using marijuana. They are punching and beating their wives or their girlfriends. We have teenagers running around wild around the hotel, opening the fire exit doors. It's a mess," he told co-host Carley Shimkus.
"When I joined the Row in 2017, it was a great place to work in. You came in there was no stress. There was a nice environment where you could associate with the guests and the exchange was pleasant. Now, this is a migrant hotel. We don't have any guests anymore. They sold the entire hotel from the fourth floor to the 28th floor. It's all migrants."
Illegal immigrants have trashed the luxury Row NYC hotel in Midtown Manhattan, one staffer says.
Rodriguez said while some of the migrants are "real great people" looking for the American dream, "Unfortunately, the government didn't vent out just the right people to come into the program and just sent anybody."
Critics are also up in arms over the food waste. Rodriguez unveiled footage and pictures of massive amounts of food the hotel was forced to throw out because the migrants wanted different food.
"I was shocked," Rodriguez said. "It was mind-boggling, and when I asked some of the guests… they said they [didn't] like it."
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One luxury NYC hotel was forced to waste massive amounts of food after migrants being housed there didn't 'like it,' a staffer says.
There are more than 38,000 migrants in New York City with 26,000 currently staying in Big Apple hotel rooms, according to Mayor Eric Adams' office.
At the Row specifically, it is costing taxpayers around $650,000 per night to house the migrants, ringing in around $500 per night per room.
Despite the trashed hotel rooms and massive food waste, Rodriguez said he also worries about how the current circumstances will affect public safety.
"It is nice to see that we have people that believe in the American dream, and it's good for them to come here and look for that, but I think that we owe New Yorkers and we owe all citizens the right to make sure that our neighborhoods are safe," Rodriguez said.
"There is no safety in our job," he continued. "Security is very shorthanded… we don't know who's drunk and who's going to… do some crazy stuff."
New York City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (R) joined "Fox & Friends" Thursday to discuss the issue at hand, calling for more stringent regulation as it pertains to immigration policy.
"We are stockpiling people, essentially, at hotels who have no other purpose other than to wait for immigration authorities to decide what to do," Borelli told co-host Steve Doocy. "And all of this is happening while the taxpayers of the city of New York are forced to basically buy and stockpile rooms without any idea of how many people are coming, how long they're going to be, how long we need to feed them, how long we need to provide them shelter."
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"And in reality, this is just more evidence that perhaps immigration, even with respect to asylum seekers, is better done when it's regulated and [a] certain number of people are led in at a time, and you happen to know who they are, where they're going and what their purpose is," he continued.
With tens of thousands of homeless people in New York City shelters, Borelli insisted the local government focus more on helping house Americans first before placing illegal immigrants in luxury hotels on the taxpayers' dime.
"When you see these videos and when we hear these stories about how much waste and abuse there is, this should cause alarm bells to ring in Washington, that this is a serious crisis," Borelli said.