Sometimes the winning comes a little bit at a time, and sometimes it comes in significant chunks. This is one of the latter, mostly due to the historical significance of the building involved: On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that New York City's famous Roosevelt Hotel is no longer being used as free housing for illegal aliens.
Under the Biden Administration, the Roosevelt Hotel served as a Tren de Aragua base of operations and was used to shelter Laken Riley’s killer.
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) June 30, 2025
Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and @Sec_Noem, this criminal command post has been dismantled.https://t.co/QQSmuhQDf1 pic.twitter.com/T360WDofOC
This is a piece of good news. What the Department of Homeland Security doesn't mention is how long it will take to make this historic hotel once more fit to receive paying guests again, if it ever does.
The New York Times, predictably, lent its usual slant to the story, deeming the former illegal alien residents "migrants."
Workers — with no one left to attend — dozed off inside the empty lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, its chandeliers still pocked with deflated balloons that had welcomed migrants to New York City.
The luggage room, once just for tourists, held a few suitcases left behind by migrant families that had cycled through the hotel. The gift shop shelves were bare, except for the diapers that city workers had handed out to new mothers.
Upstairs, the grand ballroom was desolate. Gone were the migrants who had slept on cots as they waited for rooms, on the same carpet where New York politicians once campaigned. A map of the United States was all that remained, with small arrows pointing to New York, and a handwritten note in Spanish: “You are here.”
To the New York Times: These aren't "migrants." This term is dishonest; it makes it sound like these people are just on their way somewhere, rather like wild geese winging their way north in the spring. They aren't. They entered the country illegally, they remain in the country illegally, and they are in New York illegally. They are illegal aliens. And now they have one less place to squat for free. The question is, what kind of shape is the Roosevelt Hotel in now, and what is to become of it?
Those were the last traces of New York’s migrant crisis inside the Roosevelt before the hotel stopped operating last week as the city’s best-known migrant shelter — 767 days after it opened as a city-run shelter in May 2023.
What needs to be done is to have the "remaining families" sent not to other shelters but to be repatriated. They should be sent back to their homes. They are, once more, in the United States illegally.
See Also: Tren de Aragua Tykes Rain Mayhem Down on Times Square, Mock NYPD
NYC Mayor Eric Adams Announces Major Change at Infamous Roosevelt Hotel Illegal Immigrant Shelter
We might note that the Roosevelt Hotel once sheltered José Antonio Ibarra, the murderer of Lakin Riley, as well as being a base of operations for the notorious Tren de Aragua gang. This was not an edifice of ease and mercy sheltering unfortunate moms, little kids, and fathers "looking to make better lives for their families." Oh, there probably were a few innocuous types, but even the innocuous types were still in the country illegally.
What becomes of the Roosevelt Hotel now remains to be seen. But the illegal aliens who sheltered there should be on their way home.
Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left's lies, new legislation wasn't needed to secure our border, just a new president.
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