“America First” anti-immigrant extremists on Staten Island have been targeting families seeking asylum using tactics that include street protests, legal action, and harassment that verges on torture. With the help of a Newsmax pundit and vigilante group Guardian Angels, hundreds of protestors have been showing up to make sure that families and women housed at two locations are the subjects of threats, violence, and a thicket of ugly conspiracy theories.
Between 100 and 300 asylum-seekers were sent to the former site of St. John Villa Academy, a private Roman Catholic school that closed in 2018. Around 15 families are currently being housed in the Island Shores Senior Center, which is owned by an organization that seeks housing for the homeless. Staten Island’s shelters hold only about 2% of the asylum-seekers sheltered by the five boroughs of New York City.
But if Republican-friendly Staten Island isn’t pulling its weight in housing asylum-seekers, the borough is doing everything it can to make these would-be Americans feel unwelcome. That includes blaring music, speeches, and loudspeakers at all hours, and flashing strobe lights into windows to make it impossible to sleep.
To be clear, the asylum-seekers being housed by New York City are by no means in the United States illegally. These are largely people who applied at the border for asylum, many of them seeking protection from authoritarian governments or criminal gangs. They are waiting for their applications to become asylees to be processed. When a person is granted asylum, they can remain in the United States without fear of deportation, and can seek to become permanent residents or citizens. Around 110,000 asylum-seekers have been housed in New York City over the last 18 months. Of these, roughly 51,000 have had their cases decided, while another 59,000 remain housed within the city. The speed of application review is hampered by a shortage of immigration judges, which was caused by mostly intentional neglect of the system during Donald Trump’s term in the White House.
Campaign Action
As reported by Vice, protests in Staten Island have been led by a former bitcoin bro and current Newsmax pundit named Johnny Tabacco. Vice reports that the right-wing commentator’s PA system was so loud it left the reporter’s ears ringing for hours after a visit to the St. John site. According to The New York Times, that PA system registered at 117 decibels. That’s about the equivalent of being on the runway 200 feet from a jet taking off, or having a loud dog bark directly into your ear. Tabacco is using all that volume to send a message of “you’re not welcome here”—a declaration that seems in utter contrast with the words written on the Statue of Liberty, less than 2 miles from Staten Island’s shore.
Tabacco has aided in organizing the protests by Republican vigilante leader and failed mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa. In addition to reportedly pushing a plan that would not just break Staten Island off from the rest of New York City but also turn it into its own state, Sliwa has also called for moving all migrants to Rikers Island, home to New York City’s largest jail.
According to Sliwa, “[T]he battleground, the Alamo, is right here, at St. John’s Villa Academy.” Similar rhetoric was provided by Tabacco, who said, “This is the hill I want to die on. Because if we break here, we break everywhere.” The violent rhetoric was reportedly welcomed by the protesters.
In this case, being at “the Alamo” doesn’t mean that Sliwa and company are facing overwhelming odds. And Tabacco saying that he is willing to die for this fight doesn’t mean he’s in any danger at all. It really means he’s eager to bring misery to others. That includes protestors strobing lights into windows and screaming out such cheerful neighborhood greetings as, “You’re illegal,” “You’re not welcome,” and the old standby, “Fuck you.”
If St. John’s is the Alamo, the defenders are the small number of migrant women inside.
Members of the protest group—some, according to the Times, wearing shirts with pictures of Trump—have spread rumors that women at St. John’s are prostitutes, or that they are not really women at all but “military-aged men.” The migrants have been blamed, with no evidence, for a statistical increase in car thefts and burglaries on Staten Island—which would be quite an accomplishment for people who just arrived in an unfamiliar setting. A small group of anti-immigrant protesters was arrested after they blocked a bus, and one in the group allegedly assaulted a police officer, but their own violence seems to be the only real disturbance in the neighborhood.
Mostly, the protesters believe that the people asking to enter the country are “other.” Untrustworthy. Unsafe. “These people, they’re gonna turn on us,” one of the protesters told Vice. “Because that’s their MO. That’s what they do. They’re gonna turn on us and they’re gonna take over.” A girl’s school across from St. John’s reportedly put up a huge fence to protect girls from the migrants, without any evidence that violence had occurred.
With people like Tabacco and Sliwa to stoke their paranoia and fear, protesters are being encouraged into levels of harassment that leave a small number of migrants, housed legally in New York, to feel—justifiably—as if they are under siege. That message of being unwelcome is definitely coming through.
Last week, a Staten Island judge sided with Borough President Vito Fossella, who sought to close the shelters on the island. However, the city is expected to appeal this decision.
Most New Yorkers believe migrants in their city are there seeking a “better life,” with a majority of New Yorkers also supporting expedited work authorizations in spite of immigration status.
