The Covid Test Company That Got Into the Migrant Business

Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll look at how a company that conducted Covid tests during the pandemic came to move hundreds of asylum seekers out of New York City — and what has happened since the migrants arrived in upstate communities.

To move hundreds of asylum seekers out of the city as its migrant crisis deepened, New York City hired a medical services company called DocGo. The city awarded DocGo a $432 million contract, while Mayor Eric Adams announced a new policy that called for relocating migrants outside the five boroughs.

The mayor said on Monday that the city had reached a turning point in the crisis and that the scene outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where people have been sleeping on the sidewalk, could become more common. “It’s not going to get any better,” he said at a news conference at City Hall. “From this moment on, it’s downhill.”

Many of those whom DocGo sent to bargain-rate hotels and motels upstate say they have been threatened and mistreated. They say they were given false hope of jobs and much-needed legal help. Finding steady work has been nearly impossible, and security guards hired by DocGo have repeatedly threatened them, they say. I asked my colleague Jay Root to explain.

What previous experience did DocGo have in providing care to migrants? Its specialty was on-the-go medical services, including providing Covid-19 tests and vaccinations during the pandemic, which seems different from helping asylum seekers get settled in a new country.

We asked City Hall this very question, and a spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Adams pointed to the company’s role in providing medical care to migrants at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan starting late last year. The spokeswoman also said that “beginning last fall,” DocGo and other contractors were tapped to “operate emergency sites to care for asylum seekers.”

In other words, DocGo first began dabbling in the migrant care business less than a year ago.

We also know from records available online that on May 5 of this year, the no-bid $432 million contract took effect. It is under this contract that the company has been busing migrants upstate — as far away as Buffalo — and providing them with temporary housing, food and other services. The city has also said DocGo is being paid to provide services for migrants in New York City.

We asked City Hall to let us see the contract, to no avail. We have now filed a request for the contract and other documents under the state’s Freedom of information Law. That request will take weeks, if not months, to work its way through the bureaucracy.

Many of the migrants who were bused upstate told you they were lied to and worse. Why?

This was a very common theme among the migrants that I interviewed in Albany.

There has been a recruiting process in New York City during which migrants are informed about the option of relocating upstate. City Hall says the program is entirely voluntary, and no one is promised a job. That’s not the story I got in Albany, where hundreds of migrants have been temporarily resettled. Most of the migrants I interviewed said authorities in New York City told them that if they went to Albany, they would get help with their asylum paperwork, assistance in obtaining a state ID and — most importantly for them — a job.

We even discovered that in one of the Albany hotels, DocGo representatives gave asylum seekers documents, on what looked like New York City letterhead, claiming they were “eligible for employment” as contractors. The letterhead appeared to be fake, but the DocGo people kept handing out the same documents even after migrant advocates complained that this was “misinformation.”

Many migrants also said they were constantly harassed, some even threatened, by DocGo’s hired security guards. At one of the hotels housing migrants in Albany, a sign posted on the wall falsely claimed they would be barred from seeking asylum if they were caught smoking, drinking or fighting.

The city says more than 90,000 migrants have arrived in Manhattan in the last 15 months. How many of them has DocGo taken upstate?

The numbers generally change weekly, but at last count last week, around 1,600.

What has the city said about DocGo and its performance under the contract?

Very little.

We know that Mayor Adams has praised DocGo for its previous work during the pandemic and that in late June he hailed the city’s “solid partnership” with DocGo in dealing with the influx of migrants.

We also know that, in response to our reporting, the city has begun investigating threats made against migrants by DocGo’s security team, some of which I recorded on video. On Monday, Adams said he still had confidence in DocGo and wrote off any problems as isolated. But he vowed to “scrutinize” the contractor and correct any deficiencies.

You spent two nights last month in the hotel in Albany where DocGo has sent the migrants. What happened once you checked in?

I began speaking to a Venezuelan man in the lobby not long after I arrived, but a security guard intervened right away. I told him I was a New York Times reporter, and he said I had to leave immediately. “But I’m staying here,” I replied.

Things went downhill after that. The security team, hired by DocGo, stationed guards outside my room, listened under the door, followed me around and said I wasn’t allowed to speak to any migrants.

When about a dozen Venezuelans defied the no-press rule on my second night there, one of the guards warned they would all be kicked out of the resettlement program unless they complied.

The same guard complained that one of the migrants, a 26-year-old Venezuelan man, talked too much. That guard said he was going to put the man “to sleep,” and said he was going to “beat the [expletive] out of him.” I recorded all this on video.

Ultimately, I was able to interview the Venezuelans in my own room that same evening, and one by one they told me they felt deceived, that all the promises of help with paperwork and employment that they’d heard in New York City had evaporated the minute they stepped off the bus in Albany.

We were concluding the interviews when a loud knock on the door interrupted the chatter. “Albany police,” said a voice from the other side. The hotel had called to complain that I was “soliciting” guests for some undefined “business,” all supposedly in violation of rules the hotel could not provide in writing, the two officers told me. I told them that this was no commercial venture but that my work was done. I checked out before midnight.

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It was about 25 years ago after a major winter storm that had mostly shut the city down. Despite the bad weather, my boss still expected me to get in for work.

Off I went, climbing the snowy mounds piled up at every intersection in Chelsea. I entered the subway, got on the train and then exited at 42nd Street near Bryant Park.

After coming up the stairs, I found my myself standing at the base of a Matterhorn of snow left behind by the plows clearing Fifth Avenue.