When migrant families were deported, neighbors invited them home

The rescue mission for migrant families began just before Christmas with a simple but unusual request.

It appeared in a WhatsApp chat group for parents of children attending the bilingual second-grade class at Public School 139 in Brooklyn.

“Hello everyone,” the message began in Spanish. “Sorry. Who can give me two large suitcases?” The woman who made the request, Suerkis Polanco, explained that her family was broke and would be evicted from their 'chete' in early January.

A Spanish-speaking parent wrote that he had a suitcase he could donate, but first wanted to know what “chete” meant. Other parents offered an explanation: It was a phonetic Spanish rendering of shelter.

What happened next underscores the many invisible and unheralded gestures that average New Yorkers make every day to help ease the migrant crisis that has roiled the city's budget and its politics for the past year.

They're reaching into their wallets, opening up their homes, buying groceries, digging through overstuffed closets, giving rides, donating their time – and even dispensing medicine.

Migrant families living in tents at the Floyd Bennett Field shelter have received essentials like a stroller and help navigating an indecipherable corner of the city bureaucracy through a WhatsApp group. Other New Yorkers opened their kitchens so migrant women could making arepas to sell. A Mexican eatery in the South Bronx provides hot meals to asylum seekers.

“We're meeting basic needs,” said Carrie Gleason, who recently revived a pandemic-era GoFundMe program for Flatbush families to help now migrants. “It feels like there's a humanitarian crisis going on, and I think the reason why so many people showed up is because they couldn't live with themselves knowing the suffering that was happening.”

For Ms. Polanco, 33, who requested the suitcases, the crisis clock started ticking in early November. That's when someone knocked on her door at the Brooklyn Vybe Hotel in Flatbush, where about 200 migrants lived, and handed her a 60-day deportation notice.

The flyer, written in Spanish, encouraged her to explore “other networks” for help and offered to “facilitate your journey to another destination.” Her heart sank.

It's not that she wasn't used to hardship. With her partner and their 8-year-old daughter, Ms. Polanco left Venezuela, crossing the treacherous Darien Gap between South and Central America in the spring and selling candy on the streets of Panama to get money for the trip to the US. Mexican border.

They found their way into New York City's shelter system over the summer and thought they had finally made it.

Then came the deportation order, just as their daughter Camila, a bouncy child who blurts out English words with a strong American accent, was finally adjusting to her new life. They knew they couldn't afford to stay near their shelter in the Ditmas Park neighborhood, known for its leafy suburbs and Victorian homes. But where would they go, and how would they get there?

A glimmer of hope appeared on December 19 when Ms. Polanco finally worked up the courage to ask for suitcases.

Suddenly, New York parents in this Central Brooklyn bubble were confronted with the real implications of Mayor Eric Adams' eviction policy, which forces families to reapply for housing after 60 days.

A group of parents started a winter clothing drive and signed up for a meal train service to compensate for the inadequate food at the Brooklyn Vybe.

Yet the most pressing issue for Ms. Polanco and several other families was finding a way to stay close to a rare source of stability: their children's schools.

“Schools are an essential oasis – they are the centers of our communities,” said Holly Spiegel, a PS 139 parent and one of the organizers of migrant assistance. “If we want them to be successful New Yorkers, we must make them part of our communities and not ignore the community bonds they have built over the past few months.”

The Polanco family got lucky in the new year, when the city postponed their eviction until January 21. That gave organizers time to launch a GoFundMe page titled “Help Shelter Families Secure Housing!” who blame the impending evictions on the mayor's “cruel changes to New York's right-to-shelter laws.”

The Adams administration and some top Democrats are against the application of the law to recent migrants. It has been interpreted to mean that anyone who asks for shelter can get it.

But the fundraiser struck a chord among parents of Camila's second-grade students and many others. Two days later, on the eve of the eviction, the fund had raised $15,000.

The next day, three immigrant families walked out of the Brooklyn Vybe and into the waiting cars of school parents.

Bianca Bockman took three people to the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, the site of the main processing center, where they had to reapply for lodging. Her daughter, Amí, takes the bilingual class with Camila and two other migrant children.

Ms. Bockman, who speaks Spanish and is the daughter of a Colombian immigrant, told two of her guests — Laura Sosa and her daughter Megan — and other displaced families to send her hourly updates.

Inside, Ms. Sosa and Ms. Polanco said school staff told them that every effort would be made to find them accommodation near their school so that their children's education would not be disrupted. But as morning turned to late afternoon, the tone and outlook changed.

A mother whose son attends PS 139 was offered a remote shelter in Queens. When the mother asked why, Ms. Sosa recalled, an employee told her that the message delivered “upstairs” was different from “the reality that is happening here.”

That didn't sit well with the Ditmas Park parents. They decided to temporarily open their homes to the migrant families.

“We were like, you should probably just come back here and ditch that whole process,” Ms. Bockman said. “And then they came here.”

Ms. Bockman and her roommates hosted two families for the night, while Ms. Spiegel, another parent, took in Ms. Polanco's family. By midnight, the GoFundMe had reached $17,000.

The fundraising pitch was updated the next day to reflect that the three migrant families had decided to stay close to three families.

“We're not sure how long that will remain manageable,” the field said, “but we're happy that we were able to find good landing sites for them.”

By then, donations had doubled to about $30,000. A week later, the fundraiser surpassed the $50,000 mark, well halfway to its $80,000 goal.

In late January, two families came forward to provide housing – a basement and an apartment in a three-story house – to the three migrant families, assuring that they would live in the neighborhood and in PS 139 until the end of the school year in June to stay. . One family has already moved.

Ms. Sosa and Ms. Polanco and their families will share the Flatbush apartment later this month. Their long-term future is uncertain, but for now at least they have a home.