- Officials made the shocking discovery Monday during an inspection of the building after a 311 call sparked an investigation in Richmond Hills.
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A Queens business owner housed 87 immigrants in a basement, charging them a monthly fee for room and board, and making $313,000 in the process, according to police.
Officials made the shocking discovery Monday during a building inspection after a 311 call sparked an investigation in Richmond Hills, law enforcement sources told PIX11.
The caller had complained that electric delivery bikes were filling the building’s backyard, Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday.
The owner of the business located in the building, Ebou Sarr, told PIX11 that he charged each migrant $300 to live there and receive three meals a day.
“The city says they have no place for these people… It’s not true,” Sarr said.
A Queens business owner housed 87 immigrants in a basement, charged them a monthly fee for room and board, and made $313,000 in the process.
About 40 beds were found on the ground floor and in the basement, according to the FDNY.
The owner of the business located in the building, Ebou Sarr, said he charged each migrant $300 to live there and receive three meals a day.
About 40 beds were found on the ground floor and in the basement, according to the FDNY.
The migrants were transported to a migrant shelter in the Bronx and an order was issued to evacuate the building for safety reasons.
Firefighters said they eventually discovered that people were taking turns sleeping because of the limited number of beds.
Deputy Mayor for Housing 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.”
It comes as City Hall says migrant shelters have been filled to capacity as more asylum seekers continue to arrive. Adams has set a limit of 30 days for singles and 60 days for immigrants staying in shelters, and many of them cannot find housing when their time runs out.
The migrants were transported to a migrant shelter in the Bronx and an order was issued to evacuate the building for safety reasons.
Firefighters said they eventually discovered people were taking turns sleeping because of the limited number of beds.
Meanwhile, Adams is 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.
According to the audit, most of those contracts were procured 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 notes 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 cost taxpayers $12.65 billion in 2023, a sum the mayor’s office promises to reduce to $10.6 billion in fiscal year 2025.
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.
