NEW YORK — Between work and getting her kids to school, Melissa Vergara waits patiently by her phone.

She is hoping to get a call from her son, who is one of the thousands of detainees currently being held at Rikers Island.

"My son feels defeated, he's starting to become hopeless," Vergara told NY1 on Wednesday. “He's starting to feel that it's just a big system that is against him.”

For months, Vergara's son has been held at Rikers as the city jail faces a mounting crisis that has resulted in unsafe conditions for everyone on the island.

"We have seen the condition of our city jails deteriorate over the last several months to the point that it's no longer a safe place for those in custody or those who work in the jails," said Manhattan Councilman Keith Powers, chair of the Criminal Justice Committee, which held an oversight hearing Wednesday. For more than six hours, lawmakers, union leaders, advocates and law enforcement debated how to respond to the ongoing crisis.

For Antoniasia Woods, it was another day she spent unable to reach her husband.

"I don't want them to think that they're forgotten, that we're all just out here living life. We're not. We are all actually suffering," Woods told NY1. "I just want to tell him that I love him and I can’t wait for him to come home."

He's been in a Rikers island intake facility for days, held with other inmates in crowded cells. Speaking through an intermediary, she has learned her husband is being kept in cells where toilets routinely overflow, there is no running water and food is scarce.

She worries for his safety.

Ten people have died so far this year, the rate of suicide and self harm is rising, and detainees' basic rights are routinely being denied.

"I can’t sit and enjoy a plate of food knowing that my son isn't," Vergara said.

For months now, the Department of Correction has been struggling with a staffing crisis as thousands of officers have been calling out sick and failing to report for duty.

The correction officers union says guards are overworked, many of them pulling double and triple shifts, while others are forced to take time off to recover from injuries. Of the more than 8,000 officers in the department, 1,789 officers called in sick on Wednesday alone.

Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association, said members of his union are forced to call in sick because of the dangerous conditions.

"We have correction officers that are suffering from major injuries from these assaults by inmates, we have officers recovering from the long-term effects of COVID-19," Boscio said.

As the administration struggles to respond, inmates are left to fend for themselves. Unable to reach her brother, Vanessa Alvarez did not get an update until this week, when a group of lawmakers toured the site and helped relay a message. He's been detained since August.

"He doesn't feel safe, I don't feel that he's safe," Alvarez said. "He told me it was like a week they didn't have no one on the floor, it's really dirty in there, there is a lot of violence."

Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration has rolled out a plan to hire additional correction officers, hire emergency contractors to clean up facilities and distribute food. They're also suspending staff who fail to show up for work.

Advocates and lawmakers are asking de Blasio to go to Rikers Island and see the ongoing crisis for himself. For now, he has no immediate plans to do so.

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