The ongoing surge of migrants to the Big Apple has forced the city to strike emergency deals with 14 hotels because the shelter system is overloaded amid President Biden’s border crisis.
Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Manuel Castro revealed the eye-popping total during a news conference at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, where five buses arrived Thursday carrying migrants relocated by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — matching Wednesday’s record number of buses.
City Hall pressed the 14th hotel into service on Thursday, up from 11 about two weeks ago, an official familiar with the matter told The Post.
In another stunning acknowledgment of the city’s inability to deal with the situation, Castro said Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul have appealed to officials in other states for help housing migrants.
“Unlike Gov. Abbott, our mayor and our governor are showing true leadership by actively coordinating with the White House and federal government and governors across the country and mayors across the country to see how we can work together to address the need to resettle asylum-seekers,” he said.
Castro didn’t identify any of the city and state leaders who’ve been contacted and neither City Hall nor Hochul’s office responded immediately to requests for comment.
But a source with knowledge of Adams’ efforts said he’d reached out to the United States Conference of Mayors for assistance.
Since May, more than 6,000 migrants have sought shelter from the city, including at least 750 on the buses Abbott said he began sending here earlier this month, officials have said.
Abbott’s move came after he started relocating migrants to Washington, DC, in April to protest what he calls President Biden’s “irresponsible open border policies” and their impact on the Lone Star State.
On Wednesday, workers on one bus were seen scanning barcodes on bracelets worn by the migrants and then cutting them off their wrists as they disembarked, leading city officials to question the purpose.
An Abbott spokesperson on Thursday called the bracelets “standard protocol for voluntary transport by the Texas Division of Emergency Management” and said they’ve “been used during times of natural disasters like hurricanes when needing to transport people to safety.”
“This process also helps ensure we are only transporting migrants who have been processed and released by the federal government with federal documentation that allows them to move about the country,” press secretary Renae Eze said.
The number of migrants stopped while entering the US from Mexico is on pace to reach a record 2 million-plus by the end of the federal fiscal year on Sept. 30.
City Hall has refused to say how much is being spent housing migrants in hotels but a Post analysis this week found the annual cost could top $300 million, based on the average $148 daily room rate it paid under terms of a $139 million contract last year.
Last week, the city said it was seeking to rent 5,000 rooms. On Thursday, City Hall confirmed that it was no longer planning to house some 600 families at the Row NYC hotel near Times Square.
Thursday’s buses carried 223 migrants, according to the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.
The passengers included several women carrying infants swaddled in blankets and a heavyset man who had to be helped off a bus and into a bright-yellow wheelchair by an FDNY paramedic.
It was unclear what was ailing the man, who was wearing a cardboard crown but no shoes.
He told a reporter he was from Colombia and gave a thumbs-up sign before being wheeled away.
The man was followed off the bus by a little girl with a long braid who carried a pillow and a stuffed animal, and who appeared to be the youngest of several siblings, including a tall, teenage boy.
Additional reporting by Zach Williams
