They're coming out of Dodge.
Migrants holed up in Big Apple shelters are reeling from ICE raids promised on the eve of President Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday, and many are resorting to tax-funded digs to avoid deportation. abandoned.
“The sooner we leave, the better,” Kelvin Nava, a 31-year-old Venezuelan immigrant, said outside a Long Island City shelter Sunday. “Arrangements are being made elsewhere.”
One Manhattan immigrant, who asked to be identified only as Rafael, said fear is gripping the shelter.
“It's in God's hands, but some people are starting to leave the hotel because they're scared,” he told the Post. “When ICE came a few weeks ago, there was a warrant out for the arrest of someone who lived here.
“There was nothing they could do.”
Other migrants said they were just angry about the suddenly bleak outlook.
President Trump has long promised to deport large numbers of illegal immigrants in the United States, and he has appointed a new tough border czar, Tom Homan, to begin making that happen as soon as he takes office.
Homan, whose top priority is immigrant asylum cities like Chicago and New York, said he was “reconsidering when and how to pull the trigger” after details of the planned raid were leaked to the press last week. “I'm doing it,” he said on Fox News Sunday. .
“There will be massive raids across the country,” he told FOX on Friday. “Chicago is just one of many places. There are 24. [ICE] Field offices across the country. On Tuesday, ICE will finally be able to go out and do its job. Remove handcuffs from ICE and arrest criminal aliens.
“That’s what’s going to happen.”
Homan asserted that, delayed or not, the raids are definitely happening and migrants are shaking in their boots.
“Some people think they will come by bus and pick up people from the shelter and take them to the airport,” migrant Limame Gueye, 29, told the Post.
Kevin Lena, a Colombian national, said he has been waiting a year for his work permit at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, but now he's worried it won't come.
“The thought of a hotel being attacked worries me,” said Jenna, 29. “We work hard to catch up on the news every day, but when we hear about raids, we get worried.
“I have a wife and two children here. I try to keep my head down and do my job, but when something like an attack happens, I have to protect my family,” he said. Said.
Rafael, 35, a Venezuelan national, said he still doesn't believe Trump will turn away immigrants who work and are willing to leave the country on their own.
“President Trump is not going to turn away the people who came here to work and make a decent living.” “Only people who cause trouble or are dependent on the government.”
Some, like Frances, a 44-year-old Venezuelan mother, leave everything to fate.
“Everything is in God’s hands,” she said. “I just have to believe in him.”
City Hall officials say the number of migrants housed in the city's shelters, which at one point numbered more than 65,000, has declined and is now less than 51,000, with the city's Randall shelter in Manhattan announced the closure of large facilities such as Tent City on Island and Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.
City officials declined to comment when asked whether migrants had been evacuated from the shelter in recent days.
But the immigration crisis has become a challenge for New York City police, with the violent Venezuelan gang Torren de Aragua gaining a foothold in the shelter system and wreaking havoc on the streets starting in 2022.
Additional reporting by Carl Campaine and Jennie Taer
