Biden administration immigration officials at the southern border are distributing faulty lists of New York City homeless shelters — leaving migrants stranded on the streets when they ultimately get bused up to the Big Apple to seek asylum, according to a report Friday.
One family from Venezuela was forced to sleep in a car after being turned away from a Manhattan shelter that doesn’t accept kids, WNBC News 4 said.
“We were not going to split up,” father Chrisman Urbaez told the TV station.
Urbaez said his family spent three days wandering around Midtown before being directed to the Department of Homeless Services’ Bronx-based family intake center.
“We just went back to the streets and thank God we met this guy who helped us get to the Bronx,” he said.
Earlier this month, Mayor Eric Adams called on President Biden to provide emergency aid to deal with the unexpected arrival of around 3,000 immigrants who overloaded the city’s shelter system.
Following Hizzoner’s demand, The Post exclusively revealed that federal officials were directing migrants to New York City even though they didn’t have any local ties.
One woman from Venezuela said she, her husband and their four kids were given an appointment with an immigration lawyer in the Bronx even though they didn’t ask to go to New York.
Veronica Prada, 28, said a Catholic church in San Antonio, Texas, put the family on a bus to Washington, DC, where another Catholic church put the family on a bus to Upper Manhattan.
After being dropped off, the couple walked with their kids — ages 2 to 8 — to the intake center in the Bronx, she said.
The latest official estimate puts the number of asylum-seeking migrants at nearly 4,000, according to City Hall.
News 4 said it obtained documents that show the Department of Homeland Security has been giving migrants in Texas lists of addresses where they can supposedly receive services when they arrive in the city.
But some of the addresses are for the corporate offices of shelter operators or for shelters that only house adults, News 4 said.
“It’s clear that somebody at the border is giving people information that is not accurate about why they should come to New York, where they should go when they get to New York — that is definitely happening,” lawyer Josh Goldfein of the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project told the station.
Lawyer Maryann Tharappel, who’s in charge of immigrant refugee services for Catholic Charities, said the nonprofit has been receiving warning letters that threaten deportation for more than 200 migrants who showed up at its office.
But the agency has no way to forward the documents because they don’t know where the migrants went, said Tharappel, who called the situation “absolutely unacceptable.”
Tharappel also told News 4 that Catholic Charities alerted the city to the misdirected migrants weeks ago.
During a news conference in the Bronx, Adams said that “this is the first time we’ve become aware of this, and we’re going to zero in on it.”
“We don’t have any of the documents,” he said.
“And I hope if someone has one, we can actually see what’s happening.”
Adams also said that “there’s some things we want to do on the ground” to address the problem “because it should not happen if it is.”
Social Services Commissioner Gary Jenkins told News 4 that the city was seeking to set up a “welcome center” for migrants, possibly near US Immigration Court in Lower Manhattan or the homeless intake center, “within a short period of time.”
The mass arrival of migrants sparked a war of words between Adams, a Democrat, and the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona, who have been sending migrants by bus to Washington, DC, in response to Biden’s border policies.
Adams accused Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey of also sending migrants to New York, which they denied, with Ducey saying, “Mayor Adams needs to get his facts straight and pay closer attention to what’s really occurring because our nation’s security depends on it.”
Adams responded by calling them “cowards” for sending away people “who are looking for help” and accusing them of lying about the migrants sent to Washington “so they could do a layover and then come to New York.”
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.
