Mayor learns more than 200 separated migrant children in NYC
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio learned Wednesday that 239 migrant children separated from their parents by federal immigration officials are being cared for in Harlem.
Speaking after a tour of the Cayuga Center, the Democratic mayor said that among the children was a 9-year-old boy from Honduras, named Edie, who had been sent 2,000 miles to the facility on a bus after being stopped trying to enter the U.S. at the southern border.
The youngest of the children sent to the centre so far was 9 months old, de Blasio said. He said he didn’t know until Wednesday morning that such large numbers of children taken from their parents were being brought to New York.
The Cayuga Center, which has classrooms in a six-story building across the street from an elevated train line, has a federal contract to place unaccompanied immigrant children in short-term foster care. Officials at the centre did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.