Three NYC migrants charged with domestic violence over the weekend
A migrant staying at an emergency shelter in Queens was busted for allegedly attacking his wife there over the weekend, officials said Monday — as two other asylum seekers were hit with domestic violence charges in separate incidents at the packed Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.
An allegedly drunken Milton Vargas-Torapanta, 31, was charged with slugging his wife in front of the couple’s 11-year-old daughter at the hotel-turned-shelter in Long Island City shortly after 7 p.m. Sunday, according to police.
Vargas-Torapanta’s 27-year-old wife said she lay down in bed with her intoxicated husband when he “began striking her with a closed fist” in their sixth-floor room at the migrant hotel on 21st Street near 41st Avenue.
Vargas-Torapanta, identified by sources as an asylum seeker housed in the city, was charged with assault, harassment and acting in a manner injurious to a child, police told The Post on Monday.
Manhattan prosecutors on Monday also released new details of two separate domestic violence arrests at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown over the weekend.
Yefferson Rivera, 23, allegedly slugged his girlfriend “on the right side of her face with a closed fist” at the migrant intake center and family shelter on Sunday, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.
Prosecutors said Rivera also “put both hands around [his girlfriend’s] neck and applied pressure, causing her to have trouble breathing, scratches to her neck and substantial pain.”
The couple’s child was in the room at the time, the complaint said.
Rivera was charged with assault, strangulation and endangering the welfare of a child.
He was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court early Sunday and released without bail. The charges are not eligible for bail under the state’s controversial criminal justice reforms.
On Saturday, cops charged Franklin Mendoza Dominquez, 23, with assault, harassment and aggravated harassment after he allegedly “lunged” at his girlfriend, scratching her chest and punching her in her right leg during what sources described as a violent lovers’ quarrel inside the Fifth Avenue hotel.
He was arraigned Sunday afternoon and also released without bail, prosecutors said.
Earlier this month, another migrant at the Roosevelt was stabbed by his girlfriend in a domestic attack.
The hotel has been a hotbed of controversy since the spring, when Mayor Eric Adams established the Roosevelt as a shelter and main processing center for asylum seekers amid the influx of migrants from the US border with Mexico arriving in the Big Apple.
The hotel has also become the center of an underground economy, with many of the migrants taking a slew of off-the-books jobs, including in food delivery, while awaiting legal federal work permits.
More than 110,000 migrants have flocked to the five boroughs since the spring of last year, with more than 60,000 still being housed and fed by city and state taxpayers.
