“This information is essential to identify gaps, make smart investments, and create policies that help people build stable, secure lives,” said Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, the sponsor of both survey bills.

Immigrants who arrived in New York City on Aug. 10, 2022, waiting in front of Port Authority to be transported to homeless shelters. The number of new arrivals has declined greatly since then. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

Last year, the City Council passed two bills (Local Laws 73 and 74) to survey the health needs and work obstacles of migrants staying in the city’s shelters. However, City Hall is behind schedule in meeting the deadlines set out in the laws.

Local Law 73 requires the city to conduct “a workforce survey of migrants, including recent arrivals and asylum seekers,” while Local Law 74 will focus on their health needs.

According to both pieces of legislation, case managers and on-site shelter staff should have received the survey by Nov. 1, 2024, and distributed it to migrants staying at the sites.

“The results of the survey shall be provided to the commissioner of the office or agency designated by the mayor upon completion no later than May 31, 2025,” the laws read.

But the surveys had not been finalized yet as of July 10, city officials told City Limits. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) is preparing the health survey while the Mayor’s Office of Talent and Workforce Development is preparing the workforce survey, officials said.

Officials said the questionnaires are almost finished, and will start rolling out in the next few months, though did not provide a specific date. 

“The development of studies of this magnitude take[s] time and deliberate coordinat[ion] across multiple city agencies to ensure that the survey is accurate, rigorously distributed and yields the necessary and reliable results needed,” a DOHMH spokesperson said.

According to the legislation, a mayor’s office or a designated agency is responsible for creating the surveys, overseeing the dissemination process, and compiling the data, in coordination with the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA).

When asked about the specific questions in the surveys, a spokesperson from the DOHMH didn’t give details, but said they will be based on the laws’ requirements.

Both the City Council and Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, the sponsor of the bills, said that their offices have contacted City Hall for the latest updates, but have received little information.

“The Council has made inquiries to understand the Administration’s current progress towards implementing Local Laws 73 and 74 of 2024,” a Council’s spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

“New York City has gained immense benefits from decades of successfully integrating immigrant New Yorkers and it is imperative that city government complies with Local Laws 73 and 74 to learn from this latest wave,” the spokesperson added.

Rivera’s office explained that the executive branch is responsible for administering the surveys, and said they have relied on the Council’s compliance unit for updates.

“I passed legislation to ensure we gather the critical data needed to understand how our city is supporting work permit applications, entrepreneurship, workforce development, and access to healthcare for our newest neighbors,” Councilmember Rivera said in a statement. “This information is essential to identify gaps, make smart investments, and create policies that help people build stable, secure lives.”

RELATED READING: Mayor Must Implement Council Laws Expanding Rental Vouchers, Appeals Court Rules

Since Spring 2022, around 237,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York, and more than 37,000 migrants are still being housed across 170 shelter sites.

Fewer than 100 new migrants entered the system during the week that ended June 22. That’s a major drop from two years ago, when the city saw an average of 4,000 new arrivals each week.

For months the city has been winding down its sprawling network of emergency shelters as a response to that decrease, incorporating most immigrants into the traditional Department of Homeless Services’ shelter system instead. Advocates have questioned whether people are still getting access to the specialized resources they need during the transition. 

Although there are no penalties or sanctions for City Hall missing the laws’ legally stipulated deadlines, the Council said it hopes to understand the issues that affected implementation. When asked, a DOHMH spokesperson said that “there have not been any issues with carrying out this law or conducting surveys.”

According to the law, the mayor and Council speaker must receive a final report on the workforce and health surveys by Sept. 30, 2025. This report must include recommendations on policies and investments to support the economic well-being and success of migrants, as well as ways to identify and anticipate their health needs.

“We aim to submit this report by the local law deadline, September 2025,” a DOHM spokesperson said.

Rivera says the information is vital now as immigrants face increased federal enforcement and deportation risks.

“As the federal government pursues a radical anti-immigrant agenda that is expediting removals, denying constitutional rights, and disrupting lives and communities, we are counting on the Adams administration to administer these surveys and deliver a comprehensive report,” Rivera said. 

“It is our responsibility to meet this moment with effective, and innovative policies that honor that legacy and ensure that all New Yorkers can thrive,” she added.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post City Behind Schedule on Surveys of Migrants in Shelter appeared first on City Limits.

By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press

The U.S. has closed its southern border again to livestock imports, saying a flesh-eating parasite has moved further north in Mexico than previously reported.

Mexico’s president was critical Thursday, suggesting that the U.S. is exaggerating the threat to its beef industry from the parasite, the New World screwworm fly. The female flies lay eggs in wounds on warm-blooded animals, hatching larvae that are unusual among flies for feeding on live flesh and fluids instead of dead material.

American officials worry that if the fly reaches Texas, its flesh-eating maggots could cause large economic losses, something that happened decades ago. The U.S. largely eradicated the pest in the 1970s by breeding and releasing sterile male flies to breed with wild females, and the fly had been contained in Panama for years until it was discovered in southern Mexico late last year.

The U.S. closed its southern border in May to imports of live cattle, horses and bison but announced June 30 that it would allow three ports of entry to reopen this month and another two by Sept. 15. However, since then, an infestation from the fly has been reported 185 miles northeast of Mexico City, about 160 miles further north than previously reported cases. That was about 370 miles from the Texas border.

“The United States has promised to be vigilant,” U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement Wednesday announcing the border closing. “Thanks to the aggressive monitoring by USDA staff in the U.S. and in Mexico, we have been able to take quick and decisive action to respond to the spread of this deadly pest.”

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In Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum said authorities there were following all established protocols to deal with the northernmost case. Mexican authorities said the country has 392 infected animals, down nearly 19% since June 24.

“From our point of view, they took a totally exaggerated decision to closing the border again,” Sheinbaum said. “Everything that scientifically should be done is being done.”

Three weeks ago, Rollins announced plans for combating the parasite that include spending nearly $30 million on new sites for breeding and dispersing sterile male flies. Once released in the wild, those males would mate with females, causing them to lay eggs that won’t hatch so that the fly population would die out.

The USDA hopes a new fly factory will be operating in southern Mexico by July 2026 to supplement fly breeding at an existing complex in Panama. The agency also plans to open a site in southern Texas for holding sterile flies imported from Panama, so they can be released along the border if necessary.

Also Thursday, U.S. Reps. Tony Gonzalez, of Texas, and Kat McCammack, of Florida, urged the Trump administration to quickly approve the use of existing anti-parasite treatments for New World screwworm fly infestations in livestock. They said labeling requirements currently prevent it.

By JONEL ALECCIA, Associated Press

A new federal estimate shows a rise in prediabetes among American adolescents, a finding that is spurring concerns about the health of U.S. children — and the way Trump administration health officials are conducting research and communicating information, experts said.

In 2023, nearly 1 in 3 U.S. youngsters ages 12 to 17 had prediabetes, according to recently released data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is far higher than a previous estimate that the condition affects about 1 in 5 kids.

There’s no question that prediabetes in U.S. youth is a serious concern. The condition puts them at risk for developing Type 2 diabetes, plus heart disease, stroke and other metabolic problems.

But scientists who study and treat diabetes noted that CDC officials released only a 600-word online summary of their new findings — not the raw data nor a peer-reviewed published paper describing how they arrived at the new figure. The agency also changed the methodology used to calculate the higher estimate without a detailed explanation.

That underscores questions about the accuracy of information being released by America’s top public health agency following widespread staff cuts in recent months, experts said.

“For any of the national health organizations now being decimated by firings (and) layoffs, I am going to be skeptical of data updates until there is transparency and clarity on the source of the data and analysis,” said Christopher Gardner, an expert in diabetes and nutrition at Stanford University.

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The new analysis used “the latest science and technologies” and “the most updated methodology as science is continually evolving,” said Melissa Dibble, a CDC spokesperson.

“These new data highlight the magnitude of prediabetes among adolescents and serve as a critical wake-up call for the nation,” Dibble said in a statement.

The new analysis relied on the long-running National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which collects information on demographic and health indicators via interviews, examinations and laboratory testing.

Prediabetes is a precursor to diabetes, a disease in which sugar builds up in the blood. Prediabetes is characterized by slightly elevated blood sugar levels, indicating that a person may progress to developing Type 2 diabetes.

The researchers collected data about blood sugar levels in U.S. youth — but they also changed the methodology used to analyze the information, dramatically increasing the estimate of how common prediabetes is.

The new analysis concludes that about 8.4 million U.S. adolescents — or nearly 33% — have prediabetes. That’s up from an estimate of 18% published in a 2020 peer-reviewed paper, which used the previous methodology. If the new methodology had been applied to that 2005-2016 data, the estimate would have been about 28%.

The increase from 28% to nearly 33% is not statistically significant, even though it reflects an apparent rise in prediabetes among kids, said Steven Kahn, a diabetes researcher at the UW Medicine in Seattle and editor-in-chief of the journal Diabetes Care. He said it’s concerning that CDC officials provided such limited information about the new analysis. Such findings typically have been published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report or submitted to a scientific journal for peer review and publication.

“I would like to believe it doesn’t diminish the quality of CDC data,” said Kahn. “However, because there’s no raw data to look at, none of us can look at it to better understand where these numbers are derived from and what they really mean.”

Dr. Samar Hafida, an endocrinologist and representative for the American Diabetes Association, said the new analysis “wasn’t very transparent,” but she noted that the CDC’s updated estimate generally squares with what doctors are seeing — an increase in youth with obesity and elevated blood sugar levels that put them at risk for serious future health problems.

“It could be that maybe the number slightly inflated, but I would hesitate to dismiss it,” she said.

It remains unclear what proportion of kids with prediabetes will go on to develop the disease, noted Dr. Dana Dabelea, a researcher who studies pediatric diabetes at the University of Colorado. Blood sugar levels can rise in response to developmental changes during puberty and then resolve later, she said.

Still, confirmed rates of obesity and diabetes among kids are rising.

The diabetes association recommends that children and adolescents should be screened for Type 2 diabetes starting at age 10 if they are overweight or have obesity or another risk factor for the disease. Focusing on healthy diet, exercise and other lifestyle factors is key, noted Hafida.

“It’s still a call to action,” she said. “There will likely be a surge in early onset Type 2 diabetes that we are not prepared to deal with.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

When the likes of Wolverine, Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Storm convert the downtown Minneapolis Club into Professor Charles Xavier’s renowned institute for mutant superheroes this weekend, Daryl Lawrence will be there with pride, but not just because of the colorful sessions he oversees as program director for “The Uncanny Experience,” a two-day immersive fandom convention celebrating all things X-Men.

This is the third year “The Uncanny Experience” has geeked out in the Twin Cities, but it’s the first year Lawrence will host a book launch for his 512-page reference guide to a fan-favorite Marvel Comics series from the 1980s and ’90s.

Frederick Melo

There have been more than 130 distinct mutant superhero spin-off series since the first “X-Men” comic launched in 1963, but if you’re assuming that “True North,” his issue-by-issue comic book tell-all, focuses on a popular X-title like the “X-Men,” “X-Men Unlimited,” “X-Factor” or “X-Force,” you’d be wrong, eh?

Lawrence — not only an author but the facilities manager for the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum — started running down a distinctly Canadian rabbit hole a decade ago.

It was the same rabbit hole I fell down around September 1985. As a youngster growing up in Boston, I was an awkward 8-year-old at the time, entering fourth grade a year young, and the colorful comic book rack in the Dedham Mall magazine stand glowed at me reassuringly.

The 1985 “X-Men/Alpha Flight” crossover ran $1.50 per comic — no small sacrifice for my working-class parents — and by the time I was halfway done with the two-part mini-series, I was completely hooked, but not on the X-Men.

Like Lawrence, I was smitten with the X-Men’s emotionally fraught Canadian counterparts, a barely-holding-its-own superhero team known as Alpha Flight, who were constantly bumping heads with their government handlers in Ottawa while darting around Vancouver, Toronto, Quebec and the Yukon.

The cover page from “True North: A Complete Reference Guide and Analysis of Alpha Flight’s First Volume,” by Daryl Lawrence, the facilities manager for the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum. (Courtesy of Daryl Lawrence)

There was the diminutive Puck, whose tiny body could hurdle through foes like a bowling ball, and Sasquatch, the scientist Walter Langkowski who transformed into a Hulk-like mythical Great Beast of the North with but a thought. And then there was Snowbird, an Inuit demi-goddess whose mission on Earth was to slay the mythical Great Beasts of the North. (If you want to see how that storyline plays out, pick up issue No. 23, circa mid-1985).

Led by a man in a super-suit, code name Guardian, and quickly replaced by his widow, code name Vindicator, the troubled team debuted in the pages of the X-Men comics in April 1979, where they made a failed attempt to retrieve their former teammate, Wolverine. They gained their own ongoing monthly series in 1983, and what a series of dramatic mishaps followed!

Superheroes when I needed them

The semi-tragic “Alpha Flight” — which still draws fan pages on Facebook and across the Internet — was penned and drawn for its first 28 glorious issues by comics genius John Byrne, who was born in England but spent most of his childhood moving about Canada. Byrne is perhaps better known for his work on the “X-Men” and “Superman,” but he and subsequent writers — notably the talented Bill Mantlo — struck a kind of storytelling gold in the first 60 issues or so of the original “Alpha Flight,” which ran for 130 issues from 1983 to 1994.

I have those first 60 issues bagged and boxed in my basement, where they live on, testament to a childhood that saw its share of upheaval. You see, for a time, Alpha Flight was like surrogate family. In sixth grade, I shifted from being bused to various under-resourced and fight-prone Boston public schools to being a day student at a suburban boarding school that was even more academically and culturally challenging.

My parents, Caribbean immigrants who ran a home daycare, had no way of preparing me for these posh young students and their unfathomable stories about ski vacations and summer trips abroad. Then, a few months into that sixth grade year, a fire destroyed our home and business, leaving us destitute. I was at the mercy of the wind, or so it felt, and I’d spend the rest of the school year wafting from home to home, living with whatever kind family would take me in — my grandmother’s pastor, my mother’s church friend, my older sister’s school teacher, a middle school classmate.

None to my knowledge were Canadian, but they were superheroes when I needed them.

It’s a fascinating thing to bounce from home to home in quick succession like an unofficial foster child. One particular host, my friend and classmate Patrick Keefe, would go on to become a true-crime author of much renown. His family fed me my first taste of asparagus, which I spit up in disgust and hid in my napkin on his dining room table. Pat’s 2018 best seller, “Say Nothing,” about the lives of unlikely militants in the Irish Republican Army, is now an FX television series of the same name.

What does any of this have to do with a dysfunctional family of Canadian superheroes, and why does “True North: A Complete Reference Guide and Analysis of Alpha Flight’s First Volume” run to 512 pages?

The answer for me is that my “Alpha Flight” collection was the one treasured possession I carted from house to house that tumultuous sixth grade year. The comics were full of stories that had to be read and re-read, absorbed — as Lawrence pointed out to me this week — like a soap opera.

Character in the closet

For “True North,” Lawrence interviewed six artists, editors and writers from the series, but not the elusive Byrne or the prolific Mantlo, a competitive rollerblader who suffered permanent brain damage after being struck by a car in 1992. Their analysis peppers all 512 pages, which offer insight into the choices made across all 130 issues, two annuals and guest appearances in other Byrne and Mantlo comics like “The Incredible Hulk” and “Rom: Spaceknight.”

For instance, Lawrence maintains that a particularly complex character — the abrasive Northstar, a competitive skier and former Quebec separatist with a sharp tongue and Spock-like elven ears — was written from the start by Byrne and fellow “Alpha Flight” creator Chris Claremont to be gay — Marvel’s first homosexual superhero! — 13 years before Northstar officially came out of the closet in 1992.

“John Byrne wrote him as a gay man, but the recently-departed (Marvel editor) Jim Shooter said ‘No, we can’t say that,’” said Lawrence, who noted Marvel writers found a way to hint at his sexuality as far back as 1986. “Under Bill Mantlo, he starts getting sick and starts coughing a lot.”

Northstar’s unnamed illness — the subject of an eight-issue story arc — seemed to mirror the nation’s AIDS epidemic at the time, catching the interest of gay magazines like The Advocate, who were soon to be disappointed.

In issue No. 50, Loki — yes, that Loki — reveals the origin of Northstar’s mystery disease: He’s actually an ailing elf.

“Loki says, you’re really an elf and you need to go back to your people and they will help you out because you have an ‘elf sickness,’” said Lawrence, noting some fans never forgave Mantlo for doing what he had to do to appease his higher-ups. “That whole storyline was designed for him to get AIDS and die of it.”

Given the opportunity to address one of the most serious and sensitive issues of the day, Marvel had blinked.

To the chagrin of The Advocate and probably more than a few Marvel writers, the closeted Northstar lived on, eventually joining the X-Men, and, much like myself, getting married around 2012 and enjoying a long and colorful life.

Lawrence’s softcover “True North” retails for $30 at Barnes & Noble. My Christmas wish-list is set!

IF YOU GO

The Uncanny Experience runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Minneapolis Club, 729 Second Ave. S.

Tickets start at around $100 or $11.50 for kids 12 and under.

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