NEW YORK — On a recent Wednesday morning, Jhonny Ramos left midtown Manhattan into a 40-degree chill, with a multitude of worries about him.
He hadn’t found any well-paying jobs. With his immigration prestige pending, he did have a painting permit.
He had to rush the subway to a Western Union store in the district, but stitches from his recent appendectomy pulled his skin, reminding him to walk slower so they wouldn’t reopen.
He then had to return to the shelter in time to miss his next meal.
Most urgently, though: I had to find decent pants. Ramos had only shorts on and winter was approaching in New York.
The next day, 11 km away in the South Bronx, Ariadna Phillips slammed the back door of her Kia Sorrento. Soon, he asked the children to find suitable shoes and their parents a place to sleep.
His car was filled with boxes of donated clothes, shoes, peanut butter and jam sandwiches, apples and loaves of bread. Every migrant he met added him to various organizational chats on the social networking site, which filled each morning with new questions about how to in a new city.
In New York, Ramos and Phillips find themselves at opposite ends of an immigration channel that began at the border with a bus ride.
For much of 2022, Republican governors organized long-distance bus rides as a kind of political theater: diverting asylum seekers from their states to liberal coastal cities.
For many passengers, however, this theater becomes a deceptive reality: they board buses with the promise of a new life in a new city and leave homeless.
Since June, more than 20,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York by bus from Texas and Arizona. Other buses took immigrants to Washington and Chicago.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joined the fray in September when he allowed flights of asylum seekers from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, sparking widespread outcry.
More: Migrants promised jobs, loose housing before being taken to Martha’s Vineyard
Authorities in Texas and Florida say they only send immigrants who decide to succeed in those destinations. But after the buses leave, asylum seekers have to move to a foreign city without speaking the language, find a place to live without relatives or sponsors to help them. they, and feed themselves without covert work.
The result, in New York City, means thousands of those migrants are placed in the city’s homeless shelter system, which is already at capacity with thousands of New Yorkers who had lost their jobs and homes to the coronavirus pandemic and a decades-long housing crisis. defended said.
As of Oct. 24, more than 63,000 people were cramming into the city’s homeless shelter formula, an all-time high. Last month, Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency and ordered staff to erect giant tents to control the overflow.
Murad Awawdeh, head of the New York Immigration Coalition, said he had noticed the largest influx of immigrants in the city in his two decades of working with asylum seekers.
“We temporarily learned that other people were showing up hungry, with nothing and that they needed genuine support,” she said.
For volunteers like Phillips, helping this new burden of New York’s homeless is a full-time job. The delivery of food and materials to the places of the city fills their weeknights; Every morning, your phone is full of new requests.
For Ramos, a Venezuelan asylum seeker, the bus ride to the East Coast brought him to the American dream he envisioned.
In the 4 months since arriving in New York, she traveled between 3 homeless shelters, struggled with hunger and homelessness, and struggled to earn a few dollars doing jobs.
“I think life here would be different, it would be better,” Ramos said. “My dream has come true, the American dream, but in recent years it’s been more of a terror. “
More: Free migrant bus rides to Washington, New York and Chicago begin in Texas border city
The migrant bus promises to be on voters’ minds as they head to the polls in next week’s midterm elections. In a national poll conducted through the Pew Research Center in August, 48% of registered voters said immigration is a “very important” factor in the coming months, climate replacement (40%) and the coronavirus outbreak (28%) as key issues.
For thousands of new homeless immigrants on the East Coast, the scenario is less a matter of politics and more of survival. Many immigrants have struggled with New York’s internal housing system, especially after what is a traumatic adventure of leaving their country and reaching the U. S. -Mexico border, advocates said. In September, a migrant mother committed suicide in a shelter in the city.
Ramos has learned tricks for navigating the city day by day. He uses the loose Wi-Fi hotspot at the 57th Street subway station to send WhatsApp messages on his smartphone to his mother and sister in Venezuela. He learned to navigate the city’s subway lines and stops through the smartphone’s maps app. If you have a few dollars for a subway pass, you’ll buy one. If you don’t have them, which happens, wait patiently for a passenger to exit the metal door and pass through the turnstile.
Ramos remains at the Park Savoy Hotel on West 58th Street, a nine-story hotel turned into a homeless shelter, one block from Central Park and just around the corner from One57, the 75-story tower where, in 2014, Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell set a Manhattan record by buying a $100 million condo.
On Wednesday morning without bloodshed, Ramos was scheduled to travel to Brooklyn. He had previously sent to a Western Union to send some of the little money he had earned — $50 — to his sister in Venezuela. But the money had not arrived. Now he had to move to a workplace to convince an agent to fire him.
He checked the direction of the exercise on his phone (take exercise C 16 stops to Franklin Avenue station) and checked his watch. He would return to the shelter until noon for his light lunch. Probably a ham and cheese sandwich, but that would be the only meal I would have until the evening.
“I missed so many meals,” Ramos said as he walked to the subway station. “I can’t do it again. “
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Ariadna Phillips quit her job at a high school in the Bronx, where she teaches English as a new language and computer science, and went straight to La Morada Mexican restaurant on Willis Avenue in the South Bronx. There, he had a dinner of nopales soup (cactus soup) with rice and tortillas, then loaded boxes of donated clothes, shoes, peanut butter and jam sandwiches, apples and loaves of bread into his Sorrento.
A circle of relatives of newly arrived Venezuelans walked through the dining room and rummaged through boxes piled up near the main entrance, looking for shoes for their 9-year-old daughter. Phillips leaned over one knee and helped the woman put on a pair of shoes. Pink toe shoes.
“Ok, in the U. S. , your length is 41/2,” he said. The woman smiled shyly.
For years, La Morada has been the epicenter of immigrant advocacy in the Bronx (red letters painted on the front door read “WELCOME REFUGEES”), and boxes of donated items invade the main entrance. Since asylum seekers began arriving from Texas and Arizona, the restaurant, run by activist and organizer Yajaira Saavedra, has been on the front lines helping them get enough clothing and food. Saavedra and Phillips, leaders of South Bronx Mutual Aid, led this effort.
Every day, after working 8 hours as a teacher in a public school, Phillips, 41, begins her volunteer assignment amid the immigration crisis in New York City. Check one of the many WhatsApp chats on his phone to see updates on migrants in the city, then a batch of merchandise in La Morada and visit the shelters where migrants are staying, alerting them via WhatsApp of their arrival time.
After loading her car, Phillips at which of the shelters she and other volunteers would stop first. Some nights, her WhatsApp channels ring continuously with news of migrants fleeing a shelter, and she and others rush to locate their accommodation.
“They were mugged, robbed, kicked out of the shelter at any time of the night or denied a bed,” Phillips said. “We temporarily interfere to intercept those people, especially if they are threatened with death in the shelter where they are. “
The convoy drove away from La Morada. Phillips checked his phone. 6:12 p. m. Va to be a long night.
New York City has been a migrant for centuries, adding giant and unforeseen influxes, such as in 2014-2015, when more than 15,000 unaccompanied immigrant minors arrived in the city, said Awawdeh, head of the coalition.
Two key differences are that the federal government largely coordinated this influx, and almost all of those young people had someone waiting for them in town — an uncle, grandparent or cousin — and in a position to welcome them, he said. Today’s migrants arrive without sponsors or ties to the community, Awawdeh said. Like Ramos, they end up in shelters.
As asylum seekers continue to flock to New York City, testing the city’s ability to cope, teams of volunteers like Phillips have been instrumental in making sure migrants find a place to sleep, eat something, and other fundamental wishes are fulfilled. Said. Other teams, such as Artists-Athletes-Activists, also helped.
“They did an amazing job,” Awawdeh said. They mobilized and offered other people food, clothing, shelter or housing of choice. “
If a migrant is deported or feels threatened and leaves a shelter in the city, organizers strive to locate the user in a “sanctuary space”: a room in a church, a bed in a company’s back room, or the couch in someone’s living room.
The lack of federal involvement in the crisis has been deeply felt, said Shahana Hanif, a New York City councilwoman who chairs the immigration committee. Unlike immigrant influxes, today’s cargo has been most commonly treated in the city, he said.
“We want local, state and federal government to coordinate,” Hanif said. “The people can’t stand this moment. “
Read more: Cubans and Haitians flee en masse to the United States. These crises fuel migration
After leaving the Franklin Avenue station in Brooklyn, Ramos walked six blocks to the Western Union collection store on Bedford Avenue.
Newly arrived migrants, mostly from Venezuela, entered and exited the small shop, sending pieces of small paychecks to relatives in Latin America. The shop just down the street from a men’s shelter full of migrants.
Orlando Sánchez, 32, sent $90 to his wife and daughters in Venezuela. Ten days earlier, he had accepted a bus ride from the Texas-Mexico border to New York, not knowing at the time exactly where the bus was headed, he said. After arriving in New York, he found a job with a painting crew that pays him even though he doesn’t have a painting permit. He saved most of his money to buy professional scissors and resume his job as a barber.
“You have to have religion in God,” Sanchez said. “He will show you the way. “
After a few hand gestures and the appearance of receipts, Ramos was able to tell the woman at the counter that the cash he had sent to his sister last week had not been earned because his call was misspelled. The woman corrected the call and returned the $50.
Ramos recalled when he had just arrived like the other migrants in the tent, when opportunities and solid jobs still felt at hand. The adventure to the United States was so long and arduous that it took the blurred contours of a bad dream.
Ramos is originally from Maracay, Venezuela. Su father was a high-voltage employee of the country’s power company, known as Corpoelec. He worked with his father on structural works or took turns at the local McDonald’s. point guard and outfielder of an amateur baseball team. His dream was to follow in the footsteps of his older cousin, Johan, whom the Cincinnati Reds courted. career.
Ramos happy to continue running with this father and offering for his family. Then, one day that year, thieves raided and killed his father in his car on his way home from work.
As the economy soared and the streets became increasingly dangerous, Venezuela seemed to be a dead end. Six years passed, he and his brother, Fernando Ramos, 27, made the decision that the only way to reach their family circle was to pass. abroad. They first lived in Colombia, earning meager income as carpenters, but when the economy also sank there, they made the decision to give the United States a chance. Friends had told them about many job opportunities and how President Joe Biden was more immigrant friendly than his predecessor, Ramos said. They made the decision to go to New York, a city they had noticed and admired in the Spider-Man movies, he said. Earlier this year, they left for the United States.
Ramos and his brother traveled through the jungles of Colombia and Panama, spending six days treading bodies and sleeping in the bushes of the Darien Gap, an infamous jungle trail linking the two countries. He saw women sexually assaulted by gangs of robbers and those who resisted were shot, Ramos said.
“It’s horrible,” he said. “Like a nightmare. “
Out of the jungle and penniless, Ramos and his brother begged on the streets of Mexico, landing inside and outside Mexican detention centers, until they still managed to cross the U. S. -Mexico border in July. Everything was left in the jungle: clothes, toiletries, so they can move faster, he said.
They crossed the Rio Grande to Del Rio, Texas, on July 13, with no hope of money.
“It took us 27 days to get here to the United States,” Ramos said. “We arrived skinny, dehydrated. But we control doing it, that’s the most vital. “
Ramos and his brother were detained and cared for by the U. S. Border Patrol. U. S. They were questioned by agents and released into the United States pending an immigration court hearing that would grant them political asylum and a work permit.
When officials presented them with individual bus rides to Washington, D. C. , they agreed, he said. They thought Washington was much closer to New York than to South Texas.
Word had spread among immigrants that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was pulling immigrants away from the border as a political statement. The brothers took the bus anyway.
“At first I hesitated, I almost got scared,” Ramos said. I didn’t know exactly where to go. But we had lost all worry years ago when we left our country.
Phillips and the other volunteers stopped at the homeless shelter, a hotel-turned-city shelter, on West 46th Street, one block east of Times Square, around 6:40 p. m. the boxes. Just down the street, giant screens displayed ads for Sephora and Coca-Cola and the musical The Lion King. Tourists bypassed the organization of migrants crammed onto the sidewalk, filling shirts stretched out with peanut butter and jam and apple sandwiches.
“Hi, I’m Ariadna,” Phillips told them in Spanish, as he led the migrants to the back of a van containing clothes and loaves of bread. “We are their neighbors. “
One woman needed antibiotics for an upper respiratory infection. Another said she didn’t feel at the shelter. Phillips wrote down their phone numbers and entered them into his WhatsApp chat. Whatever you need, let us know there, he ordered. The women nodded. .
“People said in New York there were all these opportunities,” said Angelica Barrades, an asylum seeker from Caracas, Venezuela, who is at the shelter with her two daughters, ages 8 and 10. “But it’s hard. Very difficult. “
Born to a U. S. Army father and a mother of Mexican descent, Phillips moved to the Bronx after graduating from Fordham University and Queens College and spent much of her life advocating for immigrants and underserved communities.
During the coronavirus pandemic, New York City being its epicenter in the U. S. In the U. S. , Phillips and his sister delivered food and supplies to first responders in the hospital’s COVID-19 wards.
Around the same time, after a video convention with organizers and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N. Y. , who encouraged the organization to create “self-assisting” teams to help neighborhoods through difficult times, Phillips introduced South Bronx Mutual Aid. , a collective of organizers and migrants who help others. The organization is one of dozens that are part of a larger collective aimed at serving vulnerable populations, he said.
“The right thing to do is to step in and your neighbor,” Phillips said. If we all did that, we’d be so much better. “
When migrant buses began arriving in New York City in early August, Phillips, who speaks fluent Spanish, spent his days helping asylum seekers wandering New York City neighborhoods or suffering in the shelter system, he said.
The WhatsApp chats he submitted today in August have more than 270 participants, adding organizers and migrants, all sharing data and answering requests. Every day at noon, dozens of messages pile up in the chat, from someone asking for HIV medication to immigrants needing to be driven to their immigration hearing.
Phillips and other members of the collective don’t just relieve migrants. They are also pushing the city to focus on offering permanent answers to the homeless rather than building transitional housing, he said. When Mayor Adams ordered transitional tents to be set up in Orchard Beach in the Bronx last month, Phillips filmed the domain around tents flooded during the storms and posted the videos on several social media sites.
A few days later, Adams’ management announced it would move the transient tents to Randall’s Island in Manhattan.
“It’s not enough to be the band-aid. That’s charity,” Phillips said. “We asked ourselves, ‘Why is this so?’ and “Why can’t it be otherwise?”
Another way to achieve replacement is to teach asylum seekers about their rights as immigrants in the U. S. Migrants monitor WhatsApp channels for symptoms of coercion, volunteer at La Morada or even speak domain schools, giving students a first-hand account of their adventure to the United States.
“Mutual aid is not charity,” Philips said.
A devoted organization welcomed Ramos and his brother to Washington, and the couple spent two days there before arrangements were made to take them to New York. He recalled marveling at Manhattan’s gleaming buildings when the bus crossed a bridge and dropped them off on the outskirts. of the city. From there, they walked for more than an hour until they reached the main entrance shelter at 400 East 30th Street.
The next day, they moved to the Atlantic Armory shelter on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, a former nineteenth-century military outpost designed to resemble a castle. Immigrants call it “El Castillo”.
Ramos found some jobs helping someone move or on a demolition crew, earning $150 one day, $300 another. Most of it went back to the circle of relatives in Venezuela. But he couldn’t find a solid job.
Last month, Ramos transferred to a homeless shelter in the Bronx. Here, he said, staff members were impolite and few, if any, spoke Spanish. He said the cafeteria employee piled extra food on the plates of other people at the shelter, but he and other Venezuelans received smaller amounts and a carton of single milk, instead of three. I felt like I never had enough to eat.
In the third-floor dormitory, a giant open room filled with 50 beds, Ramos saw tenants smoking drugs or drinking pints of alcohol, he said.
A spokesman for the New York City Department of Human Services, which runs the shelters, said the company has “channels” for consumers to report any misconduct on its services and officials are investigating the report very well. All your sites are protected 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“We do not tolerate any misconduct against or between customers,” the spokesman said in a statement. “A secure environment is critical to the good fortune of any DSS-DHS facility. “
A resident of the shelter gave Ramos Phillips’ call and phone number and soon found himself in one of his WhatsApp groups. all the recent struggles in his life, from the jungles of Panama to the streets of the Bronx. Phillips also brought him a liter of La Morada bird soup, which he devoured enthusiastically.
“Without her, I would have starved to death in this shelter,” he said.
One day in mid-October, Ramos ate the raw lasagna from the shelter and soon began to feel violently ill. Chills ran down his spine and he vomited blood. An ambulance took him to a hospital at Mount Sinai in Queens, where doctors performed an emergency appendectomy. .
Two days later, after repeated emails on his behalf from Phillips, Ramos woke up late at night and met his brother at the Park Savoy hotel shelter downtown. His room at Park Savoy is small and empty, with a bachelor bed. , a small metal locker and a window. But it’s just for him, with his own bathroom. His brother’s room is across the hall. When he got to his new room, he collapsed on the floor and cried.
“I felt like I got out of jail,” he said, referring to the Bronx shelter.
That night, for the first time in months, Ramos slept quietly at night.
Ramos said his life has advanced markedly since he was transferred to Park Savoy shelter. Their food is in smart quantities and the environment is friendlier. of work.
While life is even harder than he expected, he said he loves the excitement and perks of living in New York, like walking down Broadway and soaking up the hustle and bustle of the city, or the friendliness of New Yorkers who avoid shooting at a subway station.
“My first challenge is to improve, my mother.
Like other migrants who received mutual aid from the South Bronx, Ramos has also pledged to help where needed. The night Phillips drove from shelter to shelter in Manhattan, Ramos joined her in distributing donated goods or answering migrants’ questions.
Around 8 p. m. , he and Phillips headed to the admission shelter on East 30th Street, where Ramos spent his first night in New York City 3 months earlier. Asylum seekers crouched on the sidewalk outside the shelter and looked at their smartphones. . Other U. S. -born citizens U. S. shelter plants were combined nearby. The smell of grass hung in the night air.
Ramos donned his hoodie over his cap facing the bloodless night and handed out apples and loaves of bread while Phillips chatted with migrants. A young couple from Venezuela had arrived in New York a few hours earlier. They were told that 30th Street was reserved for men.
Phillips received their private details and, his smartphone, registered them in the city’s formula as a couple, then escorted them to the shelter to make sure they entered. Ramos answered questions from another couple and directed them to Phillips.
After more than an hour, Phillips and Ramos put away what was left of the donated possessions and prepared to leave. It had been a smart night.
Asylum seekers like Ramos are special because, having gone through the system, they know the traps and may just be other immigrants, Phillips said. He plans to continue educating them to organize and protect themselves, he said.
The more asylum seekers send Southern states, the more prominent the tense housing landscape in New York and the plight of migrants, Phillips said. the voting booth.
“What he’s doing is just helping each other,” Phillips said. “It’s going to generate outrage over the lack of social media and eventually give us a lot more voters. “
Follow Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.