Families have been moved from a shelter where police fired a stun gun at the migrant

A few days after a violent confrontation in which police struck and used a stun gun on a Venezuelan migrant at a city-run shelter in Queens, that man’s family and three other families staying at the shelter received unexpected news with little explanation: they had to move.

Two of the families said in interviews that they were told to pack their belongings and then placed in taxis and Ubers that dropped them off at other shelters. The abrupt moves and lack of clarity – shelter staff only told them they were being moved for “safety reasons” – left the families searching for answers in their new environment.

“We didn’t even get a warning,” said Alexander Monsalve, 40, who was put into a car with his wife and two daughters around 9 p.m. Tuesday and dropped them off at a Staten Island hotel about 30 miles away. had been converted into a reception center for migrants. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

The families’ move appeared to be the latest fallout from last week’s altercation at the Queens shelter, where police officers responding to calls about a dispute tried to restrain a migrant holding his 1-year-old son. Officers used a stun gun on the man, separated him from his child and struck him repeatedly as they tried to subdue him.

City officials are investigating the matter. Mayor Eric Adams has supported the officers’ behavior, saying the migrant, Yanny Cordero, was drunk and acting violently. Mr. Cordero, who was arrested and later released, has vehemently denied the allegations.

Most of the removals took place after The New York Times published video of the police altercation. Those moved included Mr. Cordero’s and that of the man who shot the video.

The city has offered vague and varying explanations, leading to a swirl of speculation among the migrants being moved and disruption for some of those who had recently found jobs and enrolled their children in Queens schools.

The changes have provided a glimpse into the inconveniences that relocation can cause for the 65,000 migrants the city houses in a hodgepodge of shelters, hotels and tent dormitories.

Many migrants are allowed to stay at a particular city shelter for a certain amount of time before having to move, a rule intended to push them out of the shelter system but allows them to reapply and be transferred to another shelter. Single adults are allowed 30 days, while families are allowed a maximum of 60 days.

In response to questions from The Times, city officials first suggested that the moves from the Queens shelter were routine.

“With the city’s shelter population nearly tripling in less than two years, we occasionally need to move families to ensure appropriate placements,” said a spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services, which runs the Queens shelter , in a statement on Wednesday.

But on Thursday, city officials said in a follow-up statement that three of the four families were moved after credible concerns were raised with shelter staff. Officials said the move was taken in response to a report from another shelter resident that raised concerns for that resident’s safety. The officials did not provide additional details, citing privacy concerns, and said the transfers were in accordance with state regulations.

“These transfers occurred due to serious concerns about potential health and safety issues for other residents of the shelter,” the spokeswoman said.

The fourth family — Mr. Cordero, his wife and their three children — were taken to a shelter in Brooklyn because of the traumatic nature of the event, officials said.

In interviews, the families said they were as surprised by their move as they were by the claim that they were the cause of safety problems at the shelter, a former Marriott Hotel on Archer Avenue in the Jamaican borough of Queens that now houses 250 migrants. families.

“We don’t understand why we were taken — without motive or explanation,” said Nadia Prieto, 20, from Venezuela, who was taken with her husband and two children to a hotel-turned-shelter in the Bronx. “No one has ever complained to us. We have not had any problems with the staff at any time.”

As they left the Queens shelter, Ms. Prieto and her husband, Andry Barreto, said they were told by a shelter supervisor that they were being transferred for “safety reasons.” They packed their bags and strollers into an Uber ordered by the shelter, not quite sure where it was going.

The lack of a clear explanation led the couple – the godparents of Mr Cordero’s children – to speculate without evidence that they had been moved in retaliation. They wondered whether it was because they had spoken to the news media, or because it was Mr. Barreto who recorded the video of police beating Mr. Cordero as they arrested him.

City Hall has responded strongly to any insinuations of retaliation.

“Shelter residents talk to the press all the time,” said Kayla Mamelak, spokeswoman for the mayor. “Speaking to the press is not a crime. It is certainly not a security issue and it is certainly not a reason why anyone would be asked to leave the system, let alone moved.”

Mr. Monsalve, who was transferred to Staten Island, said he was at work Tuesday afternoon when guards suddenly came to his room and told his wife that the family had to leave the Queens shelter, where they had been staying for three months. .

Within a few hours they had packed their things. When Mr Monsalve asked why they were being moved, a shelter worker told him the order had come “from above” and they were being moved for “safety reasons,” he said.

He also wondered without evidence whether they were being moved because a shelter worker had seen his wife talking to a Telemundo reporter about the police altercation earlier in the week.

Or maybe, he thought, it was a run-in he had with a security guard at the Queens Shelter, who he said yelled at one of his daughters after she stopped the elevator one day.

Whatever the reason, Mr. Monsalve, who had found work as a construction worker selling balloons in Queens, said he felt especially upset about his daughters, ages 9 and 13, who had settled in and made friends at their school in Queens.

On Thursday, their parents were already busy registering them at a new school on Staten Island – a place they had never heard of.

“Now we start again,” he said in Spanish. “As they say, ‘All change is for the greater good.’”

Dana Rubinstein And Liset Cruz reporting contributed.