Forty-four migrants who have been staying in dormitory rooms at SUNY Buffalo State University will be evicted this weekend after the school abruptly ended an agreement with Jericho Road Community Health Center that allowed the undocumented immigrants to live on campus.
Jericho and Buffalo State agreed to let migrants stay there starting in May because Jericho Road’s Vive Shelter was over capacity, said Dr. Myron Glick, Jericho Road’s founder and CEO.
Education officials in Western New York are working to accommodate around 120 migrant children who will be attending local schools in the fall.
But Glick said a Buffalo State official recently told him the school decided against extending the agreement because the parents of some students expressed concerns about their children’s safety after two migrants were charged with sex crimes at Cheektowaga hotels.
Glick said the migrants at Buffalo State should not be judged by the actions of two other migrants to whom they have no connections.
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“We live in a community where there’s prejudice,” Glick said. “And this decision was made, really, in my opinion, as – what’s the right word? – in reaction to that prejudice.”
National Guard troops being sent to the Cheektowaga hotels housing asylum-seekers from New York City will “act as a stabilizing presence,” Erie County Executive Mark Pononcarz said Saturday, reacting to the arrest of a second migrant on a sex charge.
In a statement, interim Buffalo State President Bonita R. Durand never referred to the Cheektowaga incidents, but said: “As we are welcoming our students back to campus Tuesday, we wanted to ensure the best possible learning environment for our students and smooth functioning of our university operations.”
The migrants who have been staying at Buffalo State are all seeking asylum in the United States. Some arrived in Buffalo as long ago as March 2022, and the most recent arrived in January.
Glick said these migrants arrived on their own and are not connected with the 540 migrants who were bused to Cheektowaga hotels from New York City this summer. Gov. Kathy Hochul had originally considered housing those migrants on state college campuses, only to opt for hotels instead.
Matt Tice, director at Vive Shelter, discusses the reasons for overcrowding at the shelter and steps the shelter is taking to help.
Jericho Road and Buffalo State, meanwhile, struck an agreement to house other migrants on campus in the spring. Neither party announced the agreement, and the migrants have been living at the university without incident.
While many of those bused to Cheektowaga were single males, the migrants who have been staying at Buffalo State include several families. According to Jericho Road’s statistics, a dozen of them are age 12 and under.
Many refugees wouldn't consider living in Buffalo, but for this man, it sounded just like what he wanted.
Thirty-two of the 44 migrants at Buff State’s dorm are originally from African countries, including nine from Congo and eight from Nigeria. Only 11 hail from the Western Hemisphere: five from Colombia, four from Haiti and two from the Dominican Republic. One of the migrants is from Iraq.
Glick said Buffalo State chose to evict them because parents of students are reacting to the Cheektowaga incidents.
“I felt compelled to speak out about this action by Buffalo State because it was discriminatory against these asylum-seekers who are human beings just like you and me,” Glick said. “We do worse by the families we are serving if we don’t speak up for them. They need to know we stand with them as fellow human beings. We cannot be silent in the face of injustice.”
Asked for comment, Durand said in her statement that the university’s agreement had originally been seen as a May-through-August accommodation, but that Jericho Road had asked to extend the deal through February.
“I made the difficult decision to discontinue the revocable permit and want to reassure our university community that as our students return to campus Tuesday, they will find their learning and living environment as they expect,” she said. “We have attempted to connect Jericho Road to local organizations that we hope can help find alternate housing for the clients of Jericho Road.”
Buffalo State’s decision, though, was a sudden one. Durand informed Jericho Road of the decision in a letter Monday.
The East Side shelter can house about 120 people at a time, but with new clients showing up daily it has been a challenge for the staff to find housing for everyone.
Noting that as of 5 p.m. Friday, the university was revoking the permit that allowed the migrants to reside on campus, Durand said in the letter: “Please discontinue use of the premises and remove all of Jericho Road’s property and the property of the occupants from the premises and restore the premises to the same condition it was in before use.”
That move left Jericho Road officials struggling to find new accommodations for the migrants, who were still packing up their belongings Saturday morning.
“We don’t know exactly where we’re going to go,” said Josephine Amuna Loki, 30, an asylum-seeker from South Sudan. “And it’s just so stressful. I feel like we’re going to be just on the streets.”
A portrait of Josephine Amuna Loki’s son, Royal, 3, is displayed in a dormitory at Buffalo State University on Saturday. Loki said she left her Royal in hiding with his father after threats put their lives in danger.
Loki, who was born in Kenya, said she came to the University of Delaware on a fellowship for young African leaders last year, but decided to stay in the U.S. because her women’s advocacy work left her in danger in South Sudan. She came to Buffalo in hopes of joining her brother in Canada, only to be turned away at the border and sent to the Vive Shelter by Canadian customs officers last September.
Another migrant who has been staying at Buffalo State, Rabiatou Traore, said she, her husband and their two children endured a six-week trek from Brazil to Southern California that included a five-day hike through the Panamanian jungle. Originally from Guinea, Traore said the family lived in Brazil for several years but decided to come to the United States because Brazil seemed increasingly dangerous and a bad place to raise their sons, who are age 7 and 1.
Alexandre Nseka "was happy he had paved the way for his children to have a better life," according to a nurse at Vive Shelter who cared for him.
The family traveled to Buffalo last October on the recommendation of his husband’s brother, who already lived in Buffalo.
“He said Buffalo is safer for the kids, and people are so friendly here,” said Traore, 40.
Like Loki, Traore and her family were preparing to leave Buffalo State on Saturday. But she didn’t seem overly concerned about the sudden move, just because officials at Jericho Road’s Vive Shelter had been so helpful since the family arrived in Buffalo.
“Vive is trying their best to get a safe place for us,” she said. “I believe they will still do it because they always know how to handle these situations.”
