A Point of Passage

Text and Photos Monica Montero

* The names of the migrants mentioned in this article have been changed to protect their identities.

Manuel Hugo, 22, watched helplessly as the Venezuelan police officers kicked down his mother’s fruit stand. The officers, he says, were trying to extort a commission, but she didn’t have enough money to pay. Hugo regularly helped his mother with her fruit stand, but it brought too little income for them to have any savings.

“If we weren’t earning any money, how did they expect us to pay them?” says Hugo. “It was horrible.”

He says he was willing to work in anything to stay in his native Venezuela, but Hugo couldn’t find work.

The room in the Manhattan shelter where Hugo lives. Photo by Manuel Hugo

Hugo and his family had little faith in Venezuela’s government. He remembers vividly how the police beat him during the anti-government protests that rocked Venezuela in 2017 during three months.

So, in the summer of 2022, Hugo, together with his mother and other relatives, decided to join the record number of Venezuelan migrants coming to seek a better future in the United States. It took them two months to travel through seven countries until they reached the U.S.-Mexico border. Along the way, they would stop for a few days to find work and make enough money to continue, knowing they would have to pay bus and taxi drivers, but also coyotes and corrupt police officers.

Once he crossed the border, Hugo accepted one of the free bus rides that Texas Governor Greg Abbott was organizing to send migrants to New York City. He told the city agent in charge of assigning migrants to shelters that he would prefer to be placed in a women’s shelter for his own safety and was very grateful when they did.

He soon found a job as a delivery worker. It was on one fateful ride, delivering milk bottles to Brooklyn, that he met his boyfriend. “It was love at first sight,” he says. Within just a few weeks, Hugo had found work and love in the city of his dreams. However, not everyone is this lucky  and for many migrants, New York City has become a transit point to another life.

Nothing was going to stop Rosa Medina, 45, from fleeing Venezuela, and crossing seven countries to reach the US-Mexico border.  Not the human traffickers, or the corrupt police, or even an amputated leg, which she lost in an accident at the age of 17.  She needed to work to pay for her daughter’s university studies and there was nothing in Venezuela, nor in Ecuador or Colombia.

Medina’s family going away party before she left Venezuela. Photos provided by Medina

Rosa Medina in the Flatiron District. Photo Monica Montero

After two harrowing months traveling with other migrants, she managed to reach the Mexican city of Matamoros, which is located on the U.S.-Mexico border. In November 2022, with the help of Mexican lawyers working with a Catholic Church, Medina was able to enter Texas. From there, she says, an uncle wired her money to get to San Antonio and finally, with the help of an NGO, she boarded an airplane to New York City.  She had fought so hard to get to that point, but she had qualms.

“I was worried that it would be too difficult to find work in New York. Everyone said they wanted to come here,” says Medina. “I wanted to go to a little town where there are no other migrants, but where there is work. My other idea was to go to Chicago, but I wouldn’t have had a shelter to stay there.”

Last year, following the massive influx of migrants that crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, Texas Governor George Abbott bussed approximately 50,000 migrants to New York City. The influx led Mayor Eric Adams to declare a state of emergency, as the Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center, in charge of sheltering migrants, scrambled to create more shelters for the sudden influx of people. For many of them, New York was a welcoming haven especially since the city guarantees emergency shelter.

However, like Rosa Medina, an increasing number of migrants that initially arrived in New York City are now finding opportunities in other cities and states where there are fewer migrants and where the cost of living is cheaper. In many instances, New York City is serving as a point of passage for thousands of migrants chasing their American dream.

Dani Bravo left New York after he was unable to find work for many weeks. Photo by Monica Montero

Dani Bravo, 32, had arrived in New York City in late September. While he lived in a men’s shelter in Manhattan, he went out every day to ask for work in warehouses, supermarkets and restaurants, but without any luck. His mother in Venezuela used Facebook to connect him with his cousin living in Texas who knew of a meat processing plant that was looking to hire. Within two weeks, Bravo’s cousin bought him a plane ticket to Dallas.

“I’m much happier in Texas,” says Bravo. “There are many more work opportunities here. Plus, there are open spaces, the weather is fabulous and it’s beautiful here.” Bravo is preparing for his eight-year-old son and wife, currently in Venezuela, to join him in Texas.

Dani Bravo at his construction job in Dallas, Texas. Photo by Dani Bravo.

Bravo explains that of the 20 men he knew during his time in a shelter, 18 of them have found work in Texas.

The job that Bravo’s cousin found for him at the meat processing plant paid $14.50 an hour. After a few weeks, Bravo began looking for better paying work in Dallas and found a job in construction work, where he earns $19 an hour and where he continues to work today.

He was able to buy a used car, which allows him not only to get to work, but also to make extra money delivering for Uber Eats.

Hector Arguinzones founded Venezuelans Immigrants Aid in 2016 with his wife after they arrived in New York City fleeing persecution in Venezuela. “Yes, migrants may find jobs outside New York, but the question that needs to be asked is under what conditions will they be working?” says Arguinzones. He argues for the need to accelerate the legal process for migrants to receive work authorizations. This would allow them to find work that is fair and does not exploit them. “Some migrants are so desperate to work that they will accept jobs that are below the legal minimum wage and work for too many hours without any break,” says Arguinzones.

Tania Pana on the Brooklyn Bridge, Photo Monica Montero

Tania Pana had to flee Venezuela or risk being kidnapped like her sister and her baby who had been taken by Tren de Aragua, Venezuela's largest criminal organization, which operates in several South American countries including Peru where her sister lived. Pana says she paid $1,000 to free her sister's baby, but was not able to help her sister, who had been forced into sex work.

Soon afterwards, she says, her sister sent her an SMS text warning Tania to flee because the Tren de Aragua planned on kidnapping her next. That’s when Tania and her husband decided to trek northwards to seek asylum in the United States.

Pana was a nail artist before migrating. During her time at the Wolcott Hotel, she made some money by doing manicures for other migrants staying at the same shelter. Photo by Monica Montero

It was Aug. 13 in Mexico when they jumped onto "la Bestia" (the beast), a train that migrants jump on and off when they run out of enough money to pay coyotes who can smuggle them through the country.

As they were getting ready to jump off the train, Tania slipped and the train's wheel cut off her right foot. She received emergency care and recovered from the immediate shock in Mexico.

Three months later, at the U.S.- Mexico border, her condition allowed her to enter the United States, even though the border had been closed under Title 42 since Oct. 12. However, her husband was not allowed in and remained in Mexico. After eight days in an immigration detention center, Tania boarded a flight to New York, where the Department of Homeless Services gave her a room at the Wolcott Hotel, one of the 100 hotels that New York City rents to be able to shelter migrants.

New York City Health offered Pana medical attention and she began fittings for a prosthetic leg. Her husband was eventually able to enter the United States and make it to Indiana where he found a house for them to rent in the quiet suburb of Elkhart. Pana joined him in late April and quickly found a job as a cook in a restaurant where she is making $17 per hour. She believes she wouldn’t have found a job as easily in New York.

Pana says she likes the tranquility of Elikar, Indiana. “There are a lot of trees and squirrels here,” she says about her new neighborhood. Photos by Tania Pana

New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs does not keep track of where migrants go when they leave, making it difficult to speak about trends. Immigrants Affairs is very concerned about Texas Gov. Abbott’s recent announcement that he would resume bussing migrants to New York, as well as four other cities, when Title 42 is lifted on May 11. New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced, “Despite Abbott’s inhumane actions, New York City will continue to do all it can to handle this influx, but this crisis is more than one city can handle.”

Medina is grateful to be in Chicago and has begun looking for work.
Photo provided by Rosa Medina

In February 2023, Medina’s cousins managed to enter the United States at the Texas border and made their way to Chicago, where they are currently living in a shelter. They paid for her plane ticket from New York and arranged a place for her at the same shelter, where she now shares a room with five other women.

“In New York, people I know spend around three or four months looking for work,” she says. “If they can’t find a job, they’ll begin asking others who have left if they’re happy. Many people are now leaving New York and going to Texas and Canada.”

Medina is eager to begin sending money back to her daughter in Venezuela. She plans to take English classes and look into the possibility of receiving a prosthetic leg, which will help her chances of being hired. She has already received her new Chicago ID, and thanks to her small circle of family and friends, is beginning to do job interviews.

Meanwhile, Hugo was able to find work in a hookah lounge, but has not forgotten the arduous journey to the United States. “The worst part was the jungle,” he says. “There were swamps everywhere, the rivers were deep and the currents strong. Many people have died. We had to drink from the river, which sometimes makes you very sick. I wore no makeup at all in the jungle. I crossed it as a proper man and very different to how I look now.”

He has plans to move in with his partner, who works as a night security guard for a hotel in downtown Manhattan. “We’re going to live at his place in Brooklyn,” he adds. “As soon as we can buy a queen size bed and paint the walls rose-colored, because he knows that is important for me.”