A crowd of Staten Island residents applauded as dozens of migrants were removed from the controversial St. John’s Villa academy shelter Monday, days after the FDNY declared the building a fire hazard.
Some 200 asylum seekers were packed onto buses and taken to the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, leading to celebration among Staten Islanders who staged protests for weeks over the use of the facility
“This should never have been opened in the first place,” said Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella. “We are very happy that the fire department frankly validated all our concerns and helped to close this facility once and for all.”
Neighborhood resident Carla Mohan said the removal was evidence that opponents’ voices were heard.
“Don’t ever let anyone tell you your voice doesn’t matter!” she said. “We fought and we forced people to listen.
“[The FDNY] are the heroes here today.”
The use of the closed-down St. John’s Villa to house hundreds of migrants last month outraged locals, leading to repeated demonstrations, outrage and even legal action that caused a judge to order the residents moved.
The order was stayed after an appeal by the Adams administration, but a subsequent order by fire inspectors to close the location lead to Monday’s removal.
Luggage could be seen piled up in the lobby of the building Monday as dozens of migrants waited to leave the makeshift shelter site.
Rosiris Silva, 50, a migrant from Cartagena, Columbia said the sudden heave-ho blindsided her and her friend Kelly Cuero, 22.
“Today I was going for a job interview when they called me that we had to go and take out our things because they were going to close the place. We couldn’t leave my suitcase so I had to return and I lost the job opportunity,” a teary Silva told The Post after arriving at the Manhattan hotel, which has become ground zero for migrants.
“The truth is that I feel bad. I feel bad because in this situation we can’t work.”
Throughout the day, a total of five city buses and four Parks Department vans were spotted loading the roughly 200 asylum seekers and transporting them to the Roosevelt Hotel, where they were expected to have to be reinserted into the shelter system.
The departing buses were met with cheers.
“Thank God for the FDNY!” people could be heard shouting over the roar of applause.
Others driving by honked their horns and flashed a thumbs up at the crowd — while some drivers screamed out: “Thank god!” and “Finally!”
City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli, one of the pols leading the fight over the shelter, said in response, “Finally, the pendulum is swinging back in the right direction.”
“People realized that we were always right about this crisis,” he added.
Councilman David Carr (R-Staten Island) praised the FDNY for doing “the right thing by ensuring the Fire Code was enforced there.”
“The former St. John Villa campus should never have been used as a shelter,” Carr continued.
Silva told The Post that she liked staying at the Villa, but she could hear he protests outside.
“They shouted every night and said that they didn’t feel safe, that we were rapists that we were prostitutes, drug addicts. They said they didn’t want us because we came to hurt the country and the children of the island,” Silva said.
But she still didn’t want to leave Staten Island because “we had a place to sleep soundly with a little bit of air.”
Cuero, a migrant from Cali, Columbia, also said she could hear the protests but still liked being on Staten Island.
“Very bad, the truth is something sad,” said Cuero, who wants to find work as an office cleaner.
The former school, which was bought by the city back in 2019, was among the seven sites that the fire department was expected to issue vacate orders this week due to safety concerns, The Post revealed last week.
Those inspections have created a rift between the FDNY and city hall over recent weeks as the Adams administration has tried to slow-walk the checks.
The site has led to severe backlash for the Adams administration as it scrambled to deal with the migrant crisis that has it on the hook to find and cover the cost of housing more than 60,000 asylum seekers.
City Hall did not respond for comment.
Anthony Antico, 56, said the shelter united the community.
“I got to say, everybody just came together and helped out in the end.”
