Where did the migrants who left NYC’s shelter system go?

A growing majority of migrants and asylum-seekers who entered New York City’s shelters in an influx that began two years ago have since left the system. More than 110,000 of the nearly 180,000 migrants who came here during what has been described as the “busing chapter” in U.S. immigration history are no longer in the city’s care.

Mayor Eric Adams and administration officials have repeatedly touted these statistics in press conferences, pointing to what they call the “success” of their policies to curb the growing migrant population in shelters and cut costs, including controversial 30- and 60-day limits on migrant shelter stays. But the city doesn’t track where migrants who exit shelters land, and there are fresh questions about the well-being of newcomers who set out on their own.

Gothamist spoke to some of the migrants who have departed, who said they had relied on budding social networks — including fellow migrants, new acquaintances, and WhatsApp groups — to find off-the-books jobs and cramped apartments in outer boroughs and in cities across the country. Historians say they’re following in the footsteps of past generations of immigrants.

But migrants who have left the shelters also report that they had spent days or weeks unsheltered, undercutting Adams’ recent assurances that “not one child, not one family, not one individual” had been forced to sleep on the street after being uprooted from a shelter. Their claims are backed up by housing and immigration advocates, as well as an internal report.

The migrants say they have slept outdoors, in trains, in crowded mosques, and sometimes substandard housing – a point driven home by the FDNY’s discovery of 70 migrants living in the basement of a Queens furniture store on Monday, followed by the discovery of dozens more living in a cramped commercial space in the…