Cambria Heights, Queens, residents say they woke up this past Juneteenth and Father’s Day weekend to find metal barricades at their street intersections and police officers stationed at the entrances to their blocks. Residents were told they needed to show ID to drive down the street to get to their homes.
The barricades were put up for the annual pilgrimage to the Ohel, the Cambria Heights burial site of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, and his father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. The pilgrimage brings thousands from around the world to the Old Montefiore Cemetery. Cars, buses, traffic, and crowds increase in the area –– which has led to complaints from locals about the impact on their quality of life.
The mostly Black, middle-class residents of this Southeast Queens neighborhood say they have gotten used to it, but residents and elected officials argue that the abrupt installation of barricades and checkpoints this year was introduced without community approval.
“You’re asking for me to show permission, for ID to come on my block? That’s something we’ve never had before,” community organizer James Johnson said.
No one disputes that visitors have the right to pray at the Ohel, said residents and 27th District City Councilmember Dr. Nantasha Williams. The issue is whether city agencies can suddenly convert residential streets into restricted access zones, forcing homeowners to prove they live there. “They have the right to come and be here, but not to the detriment of community members feeling welcome in their own homes,” Williams stated.
Williams said her office had been planning for the Ohel with city agencies for four to five months before this year’s pilgrimage. They had conversations with the NYPD, Department of Sanitation, Department of Buildings, Parks, the mayor’s office, and Ohel representatives. Her office also helped organize a town hall meeting at the end of May so residents could ask agencies questions directly.
However, Williams said street barricades were not part of the plan that residents were told to expect.
“Specifically as it pertains to the police department, there were no plans to block any streets: That never came up in any of the plans,” Williams told the Amsterdam News. “For the most part, [for] most of the things that took place, there was line of sight and community members knew about it, but the blocking of the streets — that wasn’t a part of the plan.”
Williams said a similar barricade issue came up briefly last year, but after she and others made calls, the order was rescinded. She said it came up again during this year’s planning because her office wanted to make sure it would not happen. “We were told repeatedly that it wasn’t going to happen again,” Williams said.
Then, days before the pilgrimage, the plans changed.
Williams said NYPD officials told her the sudden change was because of counterterrorism concerns. “The original thing that they told me was terrorism,” Williams said. “They said that they were concerned about a terrorist attack and that they wanted to ensure that their plan met the muster and rating system of the counter-terrorism unit in terms of being properly secured.”
Williams said the NYPD referenced the January 28 incident in Brooklyn, when a man was arrested for repeatedly ramming a car into the building that houses the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters in Crown Heights. Police investigated that case as a possible hate crime.
An NYPD spokesperson told the AmNews via email that the department was at the Ohel because “it is the NYPD’s responsibility to keep all of our diverse communities safe,” and because Jewish New Yorkers have faced a sharp rise in antisemitic hate crimes. “In 2025, hate crimes against Jewish New Yorkers accounted for 57% of all hate crimes reported, despite Jewish New Yorkers making up only 10% of the city’s population, so of course the NYPD would have a presence here to ensure this important Jewish site is safe,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that the department also tried to deal with the concerns of Cambria Heights residents: “We listened to feedback from residents and took proactive measures to minimize disruptions to residents in the immediate vicinity of the Ohel by offering temporary parking placards and instructing officers to communicate with community members as they enter the area to ensure residents could access their homes and park their cars on their block.”
The spokesperson said the Ohel pilgrimage was handled this way because “since October 7, there have been dozens of attacks and plots targeting Israeli diplomatic sites, synagogues, Jewish schools, and Jewish communities across the United States and Europe,” including “a mass casualty plot against a Brooklyn synagogue disrupted by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.” The NYPD spokesperson said officers set up a “frozen zone” in Cambria Heights so residents would have access to parking near their homes during the pilgrimage after residents complained in previous years about blocked driveways, double parking, and other parking problems.
Residents were given placards to access the frozen zone, the spokesperson said. Those without placards were “simply asked if they lived on the block, and then granted access.” The spokesperson also said a complaint about delivery drivers being unable to access the area “was corrected immediately.”
This year’s Ohel felt different
Cambria Heights is used to hosting the Ohel pilgrimage. The Rebbe died in 1994, and annual tributes have brought visitors to the Ohel for more than three decades now. Chabad officials told the news site QNS that about 20,000 people arrived on June 18, and 50,000 were expected to come throughout the week.
The Ohel is one of the most visited Jewish sites outside of Israel, according to Chabad representatives. Visitors come to pray, leave notes, and honor Schneerson’s legacy. The yearly pilgrimage has become a regular part of life in Southeast Queens, and both homeowners and residents report that it affects them.
Johnson, who lives in Cambria Heights and helped organize residents after the barricades went up, said the difference this year was not simply the size of the crowd but the way local authorities were used. “The thing that’s inconsistent is that it never happened before; they’ve never barricaded people’s houses on a block,” Johnson said. “If you’re on 120th Ave., and you want to turn on your block, you would need identification to come on your block if it was on 121st Ave.” Johnson said the event happens every year, but “this has been the worst it has ever been.”
Most residents in Cambria Heights own and maintain their homes and expect city agencies to respect that investment. Advocates often point to Southeast Queens as one of New York City’s most important centers of Black homeownership.
“These are homeowners, single-family homeowners,” Johnson put it plainly. “They own property, their own house. We’re probably like an 85 to 90% Black neighborhood.”
Johnson said Cambria Heights residents invest heavily in their homes and expect basic city services in return. “We maintain our properties. We have a very beautiful community. Every summer or springtime, you’re going to see somebody doing a roof, new pavers, or new siding, right? We invest in our community; we just want a simple quality of life, and this is not helping our quality of life.”
That is why residents’ frustrations go beyond the barricades. For years, they say, the Ohel pilgrimage has brought cars blocking driveways and bus stops, and litter, idling, loitering, and complaints that some visitors urinate, defecate, or pass out on their lawns.
Williams said her office has heard those complaints repeatedly. “I was told that that did, in fact, happen this weekend,” she said of reports of people urinating or defecating on lawns, “but I have heard this take place in previous years.”
Williams said she has been told enforcement is difficult when police officers do not witness the incidents, but she questioned whether the officers assigned to the pilgrimage were even directed to care about residents’ quality-of-life issues.
“My thing is if they were more concerned about ensuring that these quality-of-life issues were not taking place versus what their main focus is, then perhaps they would have actually caught people in the act, but that’s not their main focus,” she said.
Johnson also said residents believe city agencies enforce rules differently depending on who is asking. He said Cambria Heights residents are routinely denied block parties, noise permits, basketball tournaments with DJs, and park events, while the pilgrimage receives major city support despite its impact on the neighborhood.
At a June 22 community meeting at the Deliverance Baptist Church, residents, Williams, NYPD 105th Precinct representatives, and community members gathered to discuss what could be done. Johnson said the room was full, with 276 chairs filled and more people standing or sitting in pews.
Johnson said the clearest resolution from the meeting was the community’s message to the city: This cannot happen again without notice, consultation, and a plan that prioritizes residents. “The community has said this is not sustainable; we’re not doing this. We’re not going to be inconvenienced for any event,” Johnson said.
Williams said the meeting did not lead to a firm commitment from the NYPD that physical checkpoints would never be used again. She also said she still wants to know who made the decision to deploy barricades, and to have a better planning process in place that brings residents in on such decisions earlier, rather than asking them to accept the decisions after they are made. “Maybe we didn’t have the right people on the call because clearly, certain decisions were made at the 11th hour, completely ignoring the months and months of planning calls that my office was having with the respective agencies and the mayor’s office,” Williams said. “I’m still trying to figure out who should be held accountable for making that decision, and I hope to have more private meetings with folks. But you know, there’s still no commitment that this won’t happen again.”
