They are getting out of Dodge.
Migrants living in New York City shelters are concerned about promised ICE raids on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, and many are leaving their tax-funded housing to avoid deportation.
“It is better to leave before,” Venezuelan migrant Kervin Nava, 31, said Sunday outside a Long Island City shelter. “I am making arrangements, somewhere else.”
One Manhattan migrant, who asked to be identified only as Rafael, said fear had gripped his shelter.
“It’s in God’s hands, but there are people who have started leaving the hotels because they’re scared,” he told the newspaper. “When ICE arrived a few weeks ago, they carried an arrest warrant for someone who lived here.
“Nothing they could do.”
Other migrants claimed they were simply angry about their suddenly dim prospects.
Trump has long promised mass deportations of illegal immigrants in the United States, and he has appointed Tom Homan, his new tough-as-nails border czar, to begin carrying it out as soon as he is in office.
Homan, who has identified immigration asylum cities such as Chicago and New York as top priorities, told Fox News Sunday that he is “reconsidering” when and how to carry out the raids after some details of the planned raids were leaked to the press over the last week.
“It’s going to be a big raid all across the country,” he told Fox on Friday. “Chicago is just one of several locations. We have 24 [ICE] field offices throughout the country.
On Tuesday, ICE will finally go out and do their job. We’re going to take ICE’s handcuffs off and allow them to arrest criminal aliens.
“That’s what’s going to happen.”
Whether the raids are delayed or not, Homan has assured migrants that they will take place, and this has them shaking in their boots.
“Some people believe they will come in buses and load people from the shelters and transport them to the airport,” migrant Limame Gueye, 29, told The Post.
Kevin Llena, a Colombian national, said he has been waiting for a work permit at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown for a year and is now concerned that it will never come.
“The idea of raids on the hotel worries me,” said Llena, 29. “We work hard to stay up to date on the news every day, but hearing about raids concerns me.
“My wife and two children are here. I try to keep my head down and get work done, but if something like a raid occurs, I must protect my family,” he explained.
Rafael, a 35-year-old Venezuelan national, said he still does not believe Trump will deport migrants who are willing to work and find their own way out of the country.
“Trump won’t send people back who are here to work and make an honest living,” he told reporters. “Only the people who are causing problems or relying on the government.”
Others, such as Francis, a 44-year-old Venezuelan mother, are leaving everything to fate.
“Everything is in God’s hands,” she explained. “I just have to trust him.”
Officials at City Hall said the number of migrants housed in city shelters, which once exceeded 65,000, has dropped to under 51,000, with the city announcing plans to close larger facilities such as tent cities on Randall’s Island in Manhattan and Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.
A City Hall official stated, “There is currently nothing dramatic or conclusive. Our exits [of migrants from shelters] have increased since the summer, and our numbers appear to reflect this.
“The exits did go up after the election and continue to be in line with the after the election exits,” according to a source.
However, the migrant crisis has presented a challenge for the NYPD, with the vicious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua gaining a foothold in the shelter system since 2022, wreaking havoc on the streets.