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Sep 03, 2023

Migrants bused to NYC hotel going door

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Migrants bused from the border to New York City have been walking around a Staten Island neighborhood knocking on doors and asking for food, clothes and work after they were put up in hotels there.

The migrants — many of whom were not ready for the colder temperatures of the Big Apple — are staying at a property in Travis-Chelsea that includes the Staten Island Inn, Holiday Inn, and Fairfield Inn and Suites Marriott, sources and workers told The Post over the weekend.

The Staten Island Inn is already completely booked with the illegal immigrants-turned-asylum-seekers, and more buses are expected in the next day or so, a Holiday Inn employee said.

"We do not have clothing and are not eating well — we need a place to work," Venezuelan migrant Geraldine Silva, 31, said outside the Staten Island Inn, where she arrived about a week ago after being bused north from El Paso.

"We are waiting for clothes," the mother said, shivering beside a handful of kids and other migrants while dressed in only a t-shirt, sweatpants and flip flops.

Locals said they were never informed that so many migrants would be brought to their middle-class neighborhood at once and that the area is already overwhelmed with the sudden flood of needy families.

Mayor Adams had declared a state of emergency in the city Friday over the deluge of migrants to the Big Apple, warning that the influx was pushing the city's shelter system to its breaking point and set to taxpayers $1 billion by next year.

Felipe Viera, 24, and his wife, Gilimersy Perdomo, 26, of Trujillo, Venezuela, told The Post on Sunday that they arrived on Staten Island six days ago.

On their second day here, Viera needed an emergency appendectomy, the couple said.

"Living here has been OK, but we don't have access to medicine, and the food is not that great. It comes frozen and microwavable,’’ Viera said.

"No one has told us how long we will be here,’’ he said. "We didn't expect it to be this cold, but that is what God decided. Everything we’re wearing is what people gave us after we arrived."

Newcomers have been going door-to-door knocking on homes, asking for clothes and other necessities.

Terrence Jones, a Staten Island resident and business owner, said he was caught off guard when some migrants rang his doorbell multiple times.

"They were speaking Spanish. I just said I only speak English. It was like three times," Jones, 56, told The Post.

"They were underdressed, had slippers on, a Red Cross blanket. I thought it was weird,’’ he said.

Andrew Wilkes, a computer programmer who also lives near the hotels, said Saturday that he has received multiple knocks on his door, too.

"I’ve had it happen three times. The fourth time was today, and [a woman] handed me a paper" identifying herself as a migrant, he said.

"They were dressed for 100-degree weather," he said of the migrants.

He said his wife was looking for any extra clothes she had around their home to donate.

"What gets me is desperate people do desperate things — that's what worries me," he added.

"It's not the right thing to do for the neighborhood, to overload it. Where are they going to go to school? There's only one school in the neighborhood."

The Holiday Inn employee griped, "Why do we have 50,000 people when you could have given them to a different state?

"We are 10 minutes from New Jersey.

"There is nothing here," the employee said. "There is nothing for them to shop, for them to do their laundry. I have no idea how they are going to do it."

The Marriot is expected to house incoming migrants soon as well, he noted.

Sebastian Bongiovani, 51, co-owner of Verde's Pizza and Pasta House, has provided free food to the migrants since they arrived.

"What we’ve seen is pregnant women, little children starving," he said.

"What I’ve experienced is people come to my [pizzeria] and ask for food. I tell them to come back at the end of the day. [A man] came back with his pregnant wife and five or six kids," Bongiovani said.

"At the end of the day, these people are just hungry," he added. "People walking around hungry is f–king not good.’’

But he said he was "touched" when a migrant woman came back the next day to thank him for a large amount of free food.

A man who said he works for a company called Garner was on the scene Saturday handing out paperwork to migrants. He said he has worked at various migrant hotels throughout the city but Saturday was his first day at the Staten Island site.

"We are here to get them started, to get them in their room. We are here to make sure they get where they need to fill out their paperwork," the worker told The Post.

But Enrique Reynoso, 25, who migrated from the Dominican Republic with his wife Yudelka Encarnacion, 22, and young son, said Sunday, "Before we came here, we were told that a social worker would come and help us.

"But most of what she tell us is, ‘I don't have that information for you.’ Our main priority is knowing where we can take our baby to the doctor if he gets sick, where he can go to school, how I can get a job.

"We were told before we arrived here that we would only be staying here for five days, but some of the others here have said they’ve been here for 15 days and still haven't been told what the next steps would be.

"I’ve been going door-to-door to business asking for a job, but many of the businesses say that because I don't have papers, they can't give me a job.

"I’m worried because sometimes our son doesn't like the food we’re given, so he might not eat that day, and we don't have any money to buy him anything."

Viera, whose wife had the appendectomy, said getting medicine is an issue.

"I’m not accustomed to not being able to go to the pharmacy to get medicine,’’ he said.

"Here, everything needs a prescription. Our only option is to call an ambulance if we need medical help. There is no one to talk to about anything. They should at least set up medical services for the kids to have them checked out on site — so no one has to call an ambulance for an earache.

"But we’re grateful to at least have somewhere warm to spend the night,’’ he said.

The couple have their own room with a single bed, they said. Families are kept together, typically three or four people to a room. A truck delivers food every night: milk, vegetables, fish, cheese, bread, juice.

City Councilman Joe Borelli (R-SI) told The Post on Sunday, "Dropping people off at a highway motel is bad, but dropping folks off who are desperate for necessities in a neighborhood with few options is significantly worse.

"Where are all these immigration nonprofits that get boatloads of cash from the city?"

Still, "I’m confident our local churches and religious organizations will bridge the gap,’’ he said — before later driving up to one of the entrances to the hotel complex and dropping off clothes himself.

City Hall did not respond to a request for comment from The Post on Sunday.

Additional reporting by David Meyer