Immigrant Kids Taken From Parents Being Held In E Harlem: Mayor

EAST HARLEM, NY — A foster care center in East Harlem is being used to house migrant children separated from their families at the United States' southern border, according to reports and city officials.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said a 9-year-old from Honduras named Eddie was processed at the Cayuga Centers facility in East Harlem after being separated from his mother at the border. The mayor spoke to Eddie's aunt, who told him his grandmother and mother are "worried sick."

"They can’t see him and they don’t know what’s going on with him and they don’t know what his future is," de Blasio said during a Wednesday press conference at City Hall. The mayor plans to visit the facility Wednesday afternoon, press secretary Eric Phillips announced.

De Blasio visited the facility Wednesday afternoon and spoke with its staff and the chief executive of Cayuga Centers. After the meeting, the mayor said that 239 children are currently being held at the facility, which has held more than 350 children since the policy to separate families at the southern border was enacted. The youngest child held at the facility is 9-months-old, de Blasio said Wednesday.

Many of the children being held at the East Harlem facility are suffering mental and physical ailments as the result of being separated from their families and detained, de Blasio said. Cayuga Centers staff told de Blasio that some of the children have lice, bed bugs and chicken pox.

"Our message to the federal government is simple. Stop this right now. Stop this broken and inhumane policy right now," de Blasio said Wednesday. "And come clean with the truth. Who are these children, how many are they, where are they? What is happening here — how is it possible that none of us knew there were 239 kids right here in our own city."

Children were seen being led to the East Harlem foster care facility early Wednesday morning by New York 1 reporter Josh Robin. Robin reports that he received a tip that the facility was being used to house unaccompanied minors from the southern border and that he waited by the facility until nearly 1 a.m. Wednesday.

Around 12:45 a.m. five girls were led into the facility by two Spanish-speaking women, New York 1 reported.

Federal authorities have sent hundreds of immigrant children separated from their families at the southern U.S. border to New York, according to new estimates released Wednesday.

New York officials have confirmed the presence of about 100 such across the state, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday, adding that the federal government has put the number at 300 — far higher than the state's initial estimate of 70. Thew New York Civil Liberties Union estimates the number at nearly 300.

After days of public outrage, President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he would sign an executive order ending the separations. But Cuomo called the practice a "colossal organizational failure" that has created "chaos" and "mayhem."

"They had no plan or accommodations for separating the children and that's why you see the picture of them in cages and kennels and shipped all across the country," Cuomo, a Democrat, said on MSNBC.

More than 2,300 children reportedly have been separated from their families at the southern border under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy pushing the prosecution of anyone caught entering the U.S. illegally. Attorney General Jeff Sessions established the policy in April.

Watch Mayor Bill de Blasio's full press conference below:

Patch reporter Annie Bryan contributed to this report.

Photo by Annie Bryan/Patch