Evarist Meléndez has not had a particularly relaxing summer.
Beginning last month, the 30-year-old and eight other men left their home country of Venezuela to seek asylum in the United States. That meant crossing Colombia’s Gulf of Urabá to the Darién Gap, a perilous, often deadly stretch of rainforest, mountains, and jungle that divides Central and South America. They traveled by motorcycle, car, train, and foot. They spent seven days walking in the jungle, made their way through Panamá, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and eventually arrived at the Río Grande, in México, where they swam through rip currents to get to Texas.
But rather than finding relief when he had finally made it, Meléndez said, arriving in Texas led him down a fresh path of frustration, treachery, and downright fear. And when he spoke with The Daily Beast around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, sitting inside the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan, he was furious.
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After all, New York City was not where he wanted to go, and not where he thought he would end up. But a nakedly political scheme by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to bus migrants from the border to so-called sanctuary cities like New York—and thus somehow expose the Biden administration’s border policies—left him destitute.
“We were told that there would be voluntary stops, but we passed through Virginia and the bus didn’t stop,” Meléndez told The Daily Beast in Spanish, explaining that he had wanted to go to Richmond, where his cousins live and were expecting him.
“I was lied to,” he added, before opining: “They even said the train ticket from here to Virginia would be $17. Now, here, I’m told that there’s no train to head over there; others tell me the bus costs $80. Now I’m in a worse place than I was before. I feel cheated.”
Abbott’s administration has consistently justified the busing of asylum seekers in part by saying that they get on the vehicles willingly and after signing a waiver. In response to Meléndez’s own situation, Abbott Press Secretary Renae Eze told The Daily Beast, “The only agreed upon destinations are Washington, D.C. and New York City. These migrants willingly chose to go to New York City or our nation’s capital, having signed a voluntary consent waiver available in multiple languages, upon boarding that they agreed on the destination. Buses take different routes to these agreed upon destinations and make several stops along the way for refueling. Migrants are allowed to disembark at any of these stops, as they have been processed and released by the federal government.”
A spokesperson for Abbott’s office also shared a copy of the waiver, which they say migrants are given before boarding the bus. The form relieves the state of any “liability” due to “injuries or damages.”
According to Meléndez, on Aug. 25 he and his friends were taken to two different shelters at the Texas/Mexico border, where they were asked to fill out some forms about where they were headed in the U.S. The next day, they were sent to New York City by bus. It is unclear whether or not Meléndez actually received and signed the consent form touted by Abbott; he wasn’t available for follow-up questions because he does not have a cellphone at the moment. But as the New York Post reported, some migrants appear to either feel too intimidated by bus security or otherwise unable to disembark where they believed they were going, even as others do in fact manage to get off at stops along the way.
Meléndez is just one of around 1,450 asylum seekers who have arrived from Texas by bus since early August, according to Shaina Coronel, a Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs spokesperson. Hungry, frustrated, and exhausted from their journey, Meléndez and his friends waited to be triaged, get water, free MetroCards, and see if they could get help to head over to their final destination.
Meanwhile, New York City, which for years has been experiencing an unprecedented homelessness crisis, has scrambled to find enough space in its shelters and hotel rooms to house the migrants. To mitigate the lack of shelter space, the Eric Adams administration is now even considering retooling summer camps to house homeless immigrants, according to a report by City Limits. (Adams has been trading barbs with Abbott for some time, and been accused of himself falsely pinning the city’s homelessness crisis on new arrivals from Texas.)
The bus dropped off Meléndez and his friends at Port Authority at 1 a.m. on Aug. 27, he said. There, they were transported to the 30th Street intake homeless shelter for single men, which is infamous for being one of the most dangerous shelters in the city. Meléndez and his friends said they saw many unhoused men using drugs, which made them feel unsafe.
“We’ve been through seven or eight countries’ shelters, and we hadn’t seen something like this,” Meléndez said in Spanish. “That’s why we decided to spend the night just walking around.”
NYC’s Department of Homeless Services did not respond to a request for comment.
When we spoke Saturday, Meléndez had not eaten since the day before, had no money, and no way to contact his family. He was hard-pressed to imagine a way forward that justified the incredible danger he went through to get to the United States.
“They sent us to that shelter that is worse than what we’ve been through. We’re back to where we started, or worse,” he told The Daily Beast. “Now I don’t have a phone—it’s around 10 of us, and only one of us has a working phone. It’s rough.”
