Migrants sent to NYC amid homeless shelter crisis have no local ties, were directed here by Biden admin
Some of the migrants who Mayor Eric Adams says are overloading the city’s homeless shelters have no ties to the Big Apple — but were still directed here by President Biden’s administration, The Post has learned.
Outside a city Department of Homeless Services intake center in the Bronx, Veronica Prada, 28, said Wednesday that she, her husband and their four kids left their native Venezuela on April 26 and crossed the US-Mexico border into San Antonio, Texas, on July 11.
They were greeted by Border Patrol agents who took them and other migrants to a processing facility, where immigration officials gave the family information on how to apply for asylum and an Aug. 23 appointment with an immigration lawyer in the Bronx, although Prada told The Post she and her husband didn’t ask to go to New York.
A Catholic church in San Antonio gave them food, clothing and other items, and put them on a bus to another Catholic church in Washington, DC, she said.
There, the church put the family on another bus to New York and they were dropped off Sunday in Upper Manhattan.
From there, the couple and their kids — ages 2 to 8 — walked to the homeless intake center in the Bronx, where they were told there were no beds available and instead got sent to a transient hotel in Brooklyn.
Since then, they’ve been returning to the center every day in hopes they can get beds there and join friends with whom they traveled from Venezuela.
Meanwhile, Prada said, there’s no guarantee there will be a room available at the hotel each night they go back.
“I’m hesitant to go, but I’m hoping to get a room,” she said Wednesday evening, speaking to The Post in Spanish.
“We’re going to use the directions they give us and go all the way there, and see if they’ll let us stay. The majority that have gone have been turned back.”
Another migrant at the intake center, Jorge Parada, 35, said he, his wife and their four kids — ages 14 to 28 — left Caracas, Venezuela, and crossed into San Antonio on July 2.
Parada said friends who entered the US earlier went to New York City and he decided he wanted to go there, too.
When asked why, he said, “Adventuring.”
“It seems like a place we’d like to live,” he said.
“It reminds us of home. It’s a metropolis.”
Parada said his pals told him about staying at the intake center, so after his family met with immigration officials in San Antonio, he bought tickets to ride a Greyhound bus to the city.
Once they arrived, they headed straight for the intake center, where they were given housing at the Wales Family Residence in the Bronx.
Parada said he was hoping to qualify for two years of “assisted living” but was told Tuesday “that we did not qualify.”
“They told us to come back and present ourselves again and ask for another appointment to see if we qualify in the future,” he said.
On Tuesday, Adams said more than 2,800 asylum-seeking migrants entered the city’s shelter system in recent weeks and he called on Biden to send “additional resources immediately” to help the city “as we serve both a rapidly growing shelter population and new clients who are seeking asylum.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that federal officials “have been in touch” with the mayor’s office but declined to comment further.
Jean-Pierre also directed reporters to contact the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which she said was the “lead agency,” but it didn’t return an inquiry Wednesday.
Additional reporting by Steven Nelson
