With more than 61,000 migrants bused to Manhattan in recent months, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams says the city’s immigration and shelter systems are collapsing.

Officials say the city had “reached our limit,” and were forced to house newly arrived migrants in gyms last week.

The strain has caused Mayor Eric Adams to make temporary rule changes regarding how families are sheltered, and who they may be forced to shelter with.

A family of asylum seekers is currently receiving shelter and other support, but is worried about how these changes could impact them.

Mery Ariza is thankful for the support her family has received since arriving in the city on a bus from Texas filled with migrants last October.

They are staying in private rooms in a Holiday Inn that turned into a shelter on Washington and Rector Streets in Manhattan.

Nonprofit organizations in the city are helping provide food and clothing.

Ariza’s son, Jhosuee Baez, has also received quality medical care in New York City, which she says he did not have in their native Venezuela.

“…the medications, the assistance, consultations were unreachable,” Ariza said in Spanish through a translator.

The city has given Ariza’s son his own private room due to his special needs and health issues, which required him to have open heart surgery.

She said she worries the safe environment they live in now could be jeopardized with recent changes to a decades-old city law.

“To be enclosed in an environment with a bunch of people, it’s stressful,” Ariza said.

Adams issued emergency executive orders to suspend some protections in the city’s “right-to-shelter” law in anticipation of a surge of migrants now that a pandemic-era federal immigration order meant to curb migration has expired.

Some of those protections include a rule requiring the city to provide beds for families with children in a certain time frame and a prohibition on placing families in congregate settings, or crowded facilities with a common room.

“To me it’s cruel, Ariza said. “All of those people and they don’t know each other.”

She says they have had a hard struggle. After she and her husband left Venezuela due to political, economic and health reasons with her four children, they lived in Mexico for some time.

Out of concern for her son’s wellbeing, she left three of her children behind and left Mexico with her son and husband.

The three then crossed the U.S. border into Texas without legal documentation.

From there, Ariza said they were put on a bus to New York, and now feel like they are finally receiving some relief.

“I think that everyone deserves opportunities, either first or second chances, to live and grow,” said Ariza’s husband, Kevin Gomez, who is also Baez’s stepfather.

Although Baez is 21 year’s old, he is non-verbal and cannot live independently.

Ariza worries that the policy changes could cause the family to be relocated to a crowded, less secure shelter that threatens her son’s health and safety.

“In my case, I have him so I can’t leave him,” Ariza said. “When there’s a lot of movement, he gets anxious so it’s not good.”

“It’s very dangerous, especially for him,” said Gomez, who worries about the possible bullying Baez may experience from less sensitive asylum seekers in a crowded setting.

“Take everyone out and put us all in the same place would create chaos,” said Ariza.

The suspension of the protections is temporary and only lasts up to five days. However, Adams has the authority to renew them if he chooses to do so.

A spokesperson for Adams also said the city has offered shelter to every asylum seeker in need of it and they’ll continue to work to get everyone into shelter as quickly as possible going forward.

The city is currently operating 130 emergency sites for people seeking shelter and eight humanitarian relief centers.