“Where did all these people come from?” Flores, a 27-year-old undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, recalled thinking last month when he saw New York up close for the first time. “It was unlike anything we’ve seen on the road here.”
Hungry and tired, they reached the southern border and crossed into the United States, into Texas and other states bordering Mexico. After being processed and given dates for asylum hearings, they were released by immigration officials to local charities and, in some cases, offered free trips to New York.
Thousands have chosen Texas charter buses for New York and the nation’s capital — where they don’t have connections or know where to turn for help. Many, like Flores and her family, ended up in New York’s overburdened shelter system, embarking on yet another uncertain odyssey as the newest members of the ever-growing homeless population.
“A social worker at a shelter in Texas told us there were free buses to New York,” Flores said by phone from an urban shelter for families in the Bronx. “We moved on to the next one and here we are.”
New York makes new arrivals ‘our priority’
By the last week of August, Texas had bused nearly 9,000 migrants to New York and Washington, as Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, sought to highlight what he said was the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border. Texas reported on Aug. 26 that more than 7,400 immigrants had been moved from the state to D.C. since April and more than 1,500 to New York since Aug. 5, providing what Abbott’s office called “much-needed relief to our overwhelmed border communities “. Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. The state has spent more than $12 million to transport migrants to Washington and New York since Aug. 9, according to data from the Texas Department of Emergency Management. Abbott’s office has said immigrants are taken out of state only with their written permission, but it is unclear if they are given other options. Abbott and others who support increasing immigration restrictions argue that the Biden administration’s policies have provided an incentive for more people to cross the border illegally. Some Republican candidates have pushed the narrative of an immigrant invasion as the midterm elections approach, pledging to do more to fight illegal immigration. On Wednesday, Abbott added Chicago to the list of cities where his administration is moving immigrants. “President Biden’s inaction on our southern border continues to endanger the lives of Texans — and Americans — and shatter our communities,” Abbott said in a statement. Chicago received 75 Venezuelan immigrants from Texas — who disembarked at Union Station Wednesday night, according to Mayor Lori Lightfoot. He called Abbott “a man without morality, humanity or shame”. “That’s not something we budgeted for, but it’s something we have to do. That’s how we’re going to figure out the finances,” Lightfoot said Thursday, adding that more buses are expected. New York City has processed about 8,800 immigrants into its shelter system since April, with about 6,700 remaining in shelters, a city official told CNN on Thursday. City officials had said the number included more than 1,000 children. Many immigrants come to New York on their own with the financial help of non-profit organizations. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Abbott’s actions derailed the federal immigration processing system and criticized the governor for not coordinating with federal authorities. Generally, immigrants are processed by authorities, released, and allowed to move throughout the United States while they await the immigration court process. They are often released in Texas and other border states and make their way to other parts of the country. The busing campaign has led to spats between Abbott and New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat whose administration has accused the governor of using human beings as political pawns and whose city has long been seen as a haven for immigrants. The mayor asked the federal government for more resources, including housing assistance. The White House said it is in contact with Adams and committed to FEMA funding and other support. “These individuals and families are arriving hungry, thirsty and some need medical attention,” Manuel Castro, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, told CNN on Tuesday. “So that’s our priority — to make sure these people are supported and comforted because what they’ve been through is so devastating.” Castro himself crossed the US-Mexico border with his mother when he was 5 years old. It greeted immigrants at the much-maligned Port Authority Terminal, an infamous passenger gate once called “a hall of unfathomable nightmares” by the website Failed Architecture.
A quest to give them back their humanity
While city officials say they were initially caught off guard by the near-daily, unannounced arrival of fares, they mobilized — with the help of nonprofits — to create a segregated reception area at the terminal. Migrants receive medical care and rapid Covid-19 tests, food, clothing, prepaid phones, hygiene items, legal assistance and transportation to temporary shelter. Many arrive with no money, just the clothes on their backs. “We know the trauma these families are going through, but this is on top of what’s happening here,” said Jose Lopez, co-executive director of the immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York. The nonprofit has volunteers at the terminal, handing out phones and cash assistance at tables set up in the reception area. “Many of these families from Venezuela have traveled months on foot and across the Rio Grande to get here. That’s a treacherous journey. And imagine doing it with a three-year-old,” Lopez said. “I have a two-year-old and a five-year-old at home and the first family I met had a three-year-old girl who just looked around and didn’t understand what was going on. I had to step away from the table for a minute. Her family was asking for resources. I asked the little girl what she had picked up from the tables. He said, “I just got Mommy and Daddy.” ” Last week, at 6:45 A.M. on Thursday, the first two buses of the day pulled up next to the terminal, one block west of Times Square, the so-called “Crossroads of the World.” Castro and community activists greeted passengers off the buses with handshakes and applause — a procession of children covered in blankets, mothers holding toddlers and young men carrying backpacks and wearing flip-flops. One man needed a wheelchair to get inside. Another migrant was taken by ambulance. “Dozens of volunteers … show up early in the morning and try to give these asylum seekers their humanity back,” said Alexander Rapaport, founder of Masbia, a Jewish nonprofit that provides meals to new arrivals. Most immigrants end up in the city’s overcrowded homeless shelter system, which housed more than 50,000 people as of Thursday night, according to the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless, which tracks shelter census reports. Some wait hours to be reunited with relatives who live in the area. Others, looking confused and frustrated, tell volunteers they thought they were headed to another city or state. New York is using 17 hotels as emergency shelters, a city official told CNN. For now, immigrants must rely on a vast, long-standing social safety net created by nonprofits and municipal agencies, facilitating access to government resources and benefits for housing, health care, and food.
“We couldn’t stay there”
Flores and her family live in an overcrowded family shelter in the Bronx, where she said the language barrier makes it difficult to communicate with staff and residents. When they arrived in Texas last month, he said, they were released with no money and nowhere to go. A social worker at a church-run shelter offered them free bus tickets to New York. The family left Maracaibo, on the northwest coast of Venezuela, on May 18. “We were hungry,” he said. “We couldn’t stay there. There’s nothing. If you get sick, you die… There’s no future there. The future is here.” Flores and other migrants described the days it took them to cross the Darién Gap, the more than 60 miles of dense rainforest, rugged mountains and swamps along the Colombia-Panama border. It is one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world. “We spent seven days in the jungle with another family,” Flores said. “A driver abandoned us, but we were lucky to get out.” When Flores’ family arrived in the northern Mexican town of Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, she said they were exhausted, hungry and penniless — having paid hundreds of dollars in roadblocks from Guatemala to Mexico. Last Thursday, Venezuelan asylum seekers Manaure Fernandez, 25, and Wilber Salvatierra, 23, walked out of the bus terminal with plastic bags after getting off a Greyhound bus from San Antonio. A charity had paid for the $270 fare, they said. Fernandez said he left Venezuela at the end of May. He was robbed of all his money in the Darién Gap — about $800 — by three masked men armed with rifles. The men told the migrants they were part of a paramilitary group. Fernandez said he walked most of the way to the U.S. border — a journey of about 2,500 miles over Central America alone. “I walked through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, parts of Guatemala and parts of Mexico,” he said. “Sometimes people helped with food and cash.” “There were a lot of good people…
