Hundreds of migrants have been waiting in long lines and in frigid temperatures, hoping to reapply for temporary housing after the Adams administration placed a 30-day cap on shelter stays for single adult asylum seekers.  

Many of them waited outside of the former St. Brigid School on East 7th Street in Manhattan Tuesday.

“I left my old shelter, Times Square shelter,” said Mamadou Balde. “They moved me out because my time was finished there, so they told me to go to another shelter.”

Balde, a native of Guinea in West Africa, is among the thousands of adult migrants affected by the city’s policy who recently received notices saying they need to vacate the shelter they’ve been staying in.

The city’s hope is that Balde and others like him find their own housing, which is nearly impossible without a job.

“So, I have to get my working permit,” Balde said. “So, now I have no money, no home to stay in.”

More than 200 other asylum seekers waited on the same line as Balde, which sometimes stretched around the block outside of the former school turned re-ticking center.

Some migrants said they had been on line for two to three days.

Critics of the mayor’s policy contend that it’s dangerous to have migrants stand in the cold for hours and disruptive to their lives.

“Maybe you have to miss a job or medical appointment or appointment with an immigration attorney who is helping you apply for asylum just to stand there all day out in the cold,” said Kathryn Kliff, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society. “So we really push the city to apply for case management, which they recognize is a very powerful tool.”

When asked about the issue during a press conference Monday, Mayor Eric Adams said the migrant crisis has caused the city of run out of money, space and the infrastructure to house asylum seekers and to better process their applications for housing extensions.

“And it’s unfortunate that we’re in this circumstance that we’re in and we don’t want people waiting outside on lines,” the mayor said. “We don’t want what you’re seeing materializing in our city. This is what we’re faced with.”

For Balde, facing the cold conditions while waiting on line may still be safer than going back home.

“The military has [taken] their power,” he said while referring to political strife in Guinea. “They don’t want to see my leader become president.”

Balde said that’s why he immigrated to the United States.

“The United States is the state of law,” he said. “If you are here, you are in protection of the law. So to save my life. That’s why I came to the United States.”

City officials told NY1 they are providing migrants with case workers during their stay in the shelter system to discuss their options in advance of the expulsion.

Since the spring of last year, close to 150,000 migrants have come to the city and roughly 60,000 are in shelters.

In the past, Adams has blamed the Biden administration, saying this is a federal issue dumped on the city’s doorstep.

NY1 also reached out to the White House but has not received a response.