The Senegalese man behind a shelter for “illegal” migrants that housed 87 people in the basement of his shop has been arrested for running another operation in which 60 asylum seekers were found spending the night.
Ebou Sarr, 47, was caught running a migrant shelter in Queens on Monday, and another place he ran in the Bronx was discovered on Wednesday.
The officials said PIX11 that at least 45 beds were found confined inside a basement and the first floor of a closed shop on East Kingsbridge Road.
The migrants were removed from their homes and taken to city-run shelters, as some of the occupants said they would prefer to live on the streets.
On Wednesday, Sarr said: “This was their choice, they choose to be here than there in the shelter.”
“If you ask every single one of them, they’ll tell you this: They didn’t want to go.”
A second shelter for “illegal” immigrants was discovered in the Bronx on Wednesday. This place was run by Ebou Sarr, the same man who was arrested at his Queens shelter on Monday.
At least 45 beds were found confined inside a basement and the first floor of a closed shop on East Kingsbridge Road. One of the beds is seen through a window of the closed store.
Sarr, a migrant, had been charging a monthly fee of $300 for room and board, earning $26,100 a month, or $313,000 a year in the process for the shelter in Queens.
Sarr, a migrant who came to the United States years ago, said he felt compelled to establish shelters.
He had been charging a monthly fee of $300 for room and board, earning $26,100 a month, or $313,000 a year in the process for the Queens shelter that operated as a furniture store.
Officials made the first shocking discovery Monday during a building inspection at the company in Queens after a 311 call prompted an investigation.
The call was made to complain about the large number of electric bicycles in the property’s backyard.
The FDNY said about 40 narrow beds were found on the ground floor of the property and in the basement there.
Those migrants were moved to another shelter in the Bronx and an order was issued to evacuate the building for safety reasons following the discovery.
Sarr continued: ‘They (the city) promise they will have places for them. They lie, there were no beds. They will end up wandering the streets again.’
“We came up with the idea that we could do it on our own, so we came up with a strategy to raise this money to help ourselves.”
‘They have been lied to in the past, they are lying again. We have to change the way we do things. We are all human, we are all equal.’
Officials made the first shocking discovery Monday during a building inspection at the business in Queens, seen here, after a 311 call sparked an investigation.
About 40 beds were found on the ground floor and basement of the Queens shelter, according to the FDNY.
‘Safety was our number one priority, I hope they change their laws. People cannot be sleeping on the streets like animals, like dogs.
‘Not even animals sleep on the street, what about human beings? They don’t care because they’re not their people.’
Firefighters added that they eventually discovered that people were taking turns sleeping due to the limited number of beds.
Most of the immigrants are from Senegal, a country in West Africa.
On Tuesday, Sarr told PIX11 he had been providing them with breakfast, lunch and dinner.
There were two bathrooms available, as Sarr explained that he had been giving out Planet Fitness memberships so those living in the basement could shower.
On Tuesday, Deputy Housing Mayor Maria Torres-Springer said, “What we discovered last night in some ways is also symptomatic of a larger crisis that this city is facing and that we have talked about repeatedly in terms of the housing shortage in this city.” . .
“It’s nothing new that too many people are making desperate decisions about where to live and what to pay, and the root of this is the fact that we haven’t built enough homes.”
Mayor Eric Adams has been accused of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on immigrants by doling out no-bid contracts.
City Comptroller Brad Lander made this claim in an audit of immigrant-related contracts released Tuesday, identifying 340 asylum-seeker contracts representing an estimated contract value of $5.7 billion.
The 311 call was made to complain about a large number of e-bikes in the property’s backyard.
A long line of migrants is seen standing in the cold as they sought shelter outside a migrant assistance center at St. Brigid’s Elementary School on December 5 in New York.
Mayor Eric Adams has been accused of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on immigrants by doling out no-bid contracts.
According to the audit, most of those contracts were awarded on an emergency basis, allowing the city to waive typical competitive bidding requirements.
In one case, a provider charged the city $185.63 per hour for shelter supervisors, which amounted to nearly $1,500 per eight-hour shift.
The audit noted that the city’s immigration crisis has been ongoing since spring 2022, with Adams declaring a state of emergency in October of that year, and questions why emergency contracts continue to be procured.
Last week, Adams announced that his administration will cut an additional 10 percent in immigrant spending and suspend drastic budget cuts to other departments after he came under fire for giving immigrants taxpayer-funded debit cards.
The Big Apple has been inundated by an influx of immigrants that has cost taxpayers $12.65 billion in 2023.
More than 170,000 immigrants have arrived in the city since spring 2022, and the crisis is only deepening as they continue to be bused in from Texas, where record numbers are arriving.