As buses of migrants arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown in the fall of 2022, a small group was there at all hours to meet them.
The volunteers greeted the newcomers at a makeshift “welcome center” at the bus terminal, distributed water and blankets, and helped them buy bus tickets and apply for shelter. Some volunteers arrived early in the morning and others stayed late overnight.
A new documentary, called "The Arrivals," spotlights the work of volunteers to aid the new migrants arriving in New York City. Filmmaker Andrea Garbarini said she intended the documentary as both celebration of their work and a call to action for viewers to help, as the Trump administration is promising to crack down on immigration.
“A bunch of underfunded, ordinary New Yorkers can do extraordinary things,” said Garbarini, 63, of Pleasantville, New York.
The film will be screened at NYU Law School at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 1. Attendees are being asked to RSVP online.
It’s also playing Monday at 6 and 7 p.m. at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville. The 7 p.m. showing is sold out, according to the center’s website. Both showings will include a question-and-answer session with Garbarini and representatives from the Westchester County-based immigrant aid organization Neighbors Link.
Garbarini was a volunteer with the New York Chapter of Team TLC and began filming snippets of the group’s work at the bus terminal in late 2022.
The film highlights three groups at the forefront of the effort: the New York chapter of Team TLC, led by Ilze Thielmann; Afrikana, led by Adama Bah; and Artists Athletes Activists, led by Power Malu.
Each volunteer leader has personal ties to immigration. Thielmann is the daughter of World War II refugees. Malu’s parents grew up in Puerto Rico. And Bah, an immigrant from Guinea, said she was detained at 16 years old when law enforcement officers accused her of being a potential suicide bomber, an experience she wrote a book about.
The documentary follows Thielmann, Malu and Bah as they organize donations, direct other volunteers and wrangle their own kids.
The movie also captures some day-to-day realities of asylum-seekers navigating life in New York City as volunteers try to assist them. One migrant says in the film he had been sleeping on the train before Bah helped him apply for shelter. In another scene, migrants use Google Translate to communicate with volunteers. And in another, migrant children play with toys on the floor of the bus terminal.
After the informal welcome center shut down in 2023, the organizers set up their own volunteer centers elsewhere across Manhattan. Thielmann created a “Little Shop of Kindness,” modeled after a retail store, where asylum-seekers could collect donated clothes and other items. Malu began organizing a legal and public benefits clinic at Metro Baptist Church, near the bus terminal. Bah began offering other aid at a location in Harlem, where she set up a mailroom for asylum-seekers to collect their mail, which has been an ongoing problem for migrants shuffled between different shelters.
At a recent screening at the Marlene Meyerson JCC on the Upper West Side, the room was filled with local residents and people who worked with or volunteered to help migrants.
During a question-and-answer session, Ruth Messinger, a Team TLC volunteer and former Manhattan borough president, noted the lack of city and state officials in the film.
“All three levels of government have done almost nothing to really engage with this issue,” Messenger said. “They pretended from the very beginning as if somehow it was gonna go away, which is ridiculous.”
New York City has spent more than $5 billion on housing and caring for over 232,000 migrants since the spring of 2022.
The city’s role in helping new migrants has divided New Yorkers, with some people insisting city officials haven’t done enough and others saying the city has done too much to assist new migrants, instead of longtime New Yorkers. In the post-film question-and-answer session, Messinger, Thielmann and Malu were critical of the city’s role, hammering city officials for not being present when the first buses arrived from Texas, and for what they described as a lack of coordination with local organizations providing assistance.
“It’s incredible — all that has had to be done without any assistance,” said film attendee Judy Bass, 72. “There should have been federal money. … And the act that this was all done by volunteers is just so disappointing.”
Julius Lang, 69, of Brooklyn, said he was struck by “power of volunteering” in the film.
“I feel strong that the faith community and other volunteers are the ones who really make a difference, who can fearlessly step up in this kind of situation,” Lang said.
