NYC’s migrant surge now around 6K amid Texas bus transports: City Hall
More than 6,000 migrants have flooded into in New York City recently, City Hall said Monday — revealing a roughly 50% increase in just two weeks amid President Biden’s ongoing border crisis.
The disturbing development came one day after the New York Public Library distributed more than 1,000 bags of supplies for migrant kids expected to enter the city’s school system next month.
Hundreds of migrants lined up Sunday in The Bronx to attend an afternoon fair at which Bronx Library Center staffers “met with over 1,000 attendees and shared welcome bags containing school supplies — such as folders, pencil pouches, notebooks, bookmarks — and NYPL activity packets for children,” a spokesperson said Monday.
Last week, Department of Education officials said they were expecting an influx of more than 1,000 migrant children, with Schools Chancellor David Banks calling it “a very fluid situation” and noting that new students “are coming in every single day.”
Sunday’s fair also enabled attendees to sign up for no-cost medical benefits, with a spokesperson for the taxpayer-funded funded New York Health + Hospitals’ MetroPlusHealth insurance company saying Monday that it was processing 691 preliminary enrollments.
Earlier this month, a bus carrying migrants from Texas to New York brought several infected with COVID-19 and one who was so sick he was expected to be hospitalized.
On Monday afternoon, the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs said the latest estimate was that about 6,300 migrants had arrived in the Big Apple from southern border states since May.
That’s up from an estimate of more than 4,000 migrants that City Hall first announced two weeks ago.
The new total includes 750 who were relocated by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs spokesperson Shaina Coronel said.
Coronel alleged that Abbott — who’s said his first bus arrived Aug. 5 in response to what he calls Biden’s “irresponsible open border policies” — has actually been sending buses “for months, despite [his] false claims” otherwise.
Coronel also said the total estimate only covered migrants who entered the city’s shelter system, adding that it “estimate could be higher as more buses may have arrived without our knowledge due to Texas’ unwillingness to coordinate and as some people arriving are staying with friends and family.”
An average of about 100 migrants have been dropped off daily outside Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal since the first of Abbott’s charters showed up, mayoral press secretary Fabien Levy said earlier Monday.
Abbott’s office didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The number of migrants stopped along the southern border this fiscal year is already greater than last year’s record figure and is on pace to exceed 2 million for the first time, according to figures released by US Customs and Border Protection last week.
During an unrelated news conference in Brooklyn, Mayor Eric Adams continued his criticism of Abbott for not alerting the city about the arrivals.
“The governor of Texas is not giving any information at all, no matter how much we try to coordinate crisis calls on coordination,” he said.
“And he has been really just a person who’s mean-spirited in the area of helping people in their time of need.”
Adams and Abbott have been engaged in a war of words that recently saw the Republican governor dare Adams to “make my day” by trying to derail his re-election bid against Democrat Beto O’Rourke.
New York state officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for an estimate on how many migrants have arrived outside the city.
Last year, The Post exclusively revealed how the Biden administration was flying unaccompanied migrant kids to the Westchester County Airport north of New York City, where buses carried them to be handed over to relatives or dropped off at residential facility on Long Island.
At the time, US Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Long Island) raged that he “learned about it from The Post” instead of the White House and worried about the potential impact on local schools.
During Monday’s news conference, The Post asked Adams about his request for federal aid to deal with the influx of migrants, which he’s blamed for overwhelming the city’s shelter system.
“We’ve been waiting to get the dollar amount,” he said.
“The White House gave us the pathway to receive the assistance. We’re going through the process of doing so and we’re optimistic we’re going to receive some assistance.”
Adams also defended Sunday’s fair in The Bronx, saying, “When we hold events like we held through Health + Hospitals over the weekend, it wasn’t just for migrants. It was for anyone.”
“If someone walked up with a child and said, ‘I need a knapsack,’ we’re not gonna ask you, ‘What’s your immigration status?’ We gave it to them,” he said.
The mayor also said, “When you see these items being given to people, it’s not coming from the city coffers.”
“It’s coming from the countless number of nonprofits, religious groups, volunteer groups — people are chipping in to help their neighbors,” he said.
Additional reporting by Zach Williams
