More than a week before the anticipated lifting of Title 42, a bus pulled into the Port Authority bus terminal in midtown Manhattan at 7 a.m. sharp, carrying 41 new migrants. Most were families with children, and most were from Venezuela, said Ilze Thielmann from Team TLC NYC, a group of volunteers who offer support to the new arrivals. A second bus arrived at around 1 p.m. with 50 people on board, the group said.
A year after the first increase in migrants in New York City, the bus arrivals at Port Authority have become a tightly controlled operation: Arriving migrants are greeted by volunteers, then whisked away to centers organized by the city to connect them to services and homeless shelters, often run out of hotels and other centers. The buses slowed earlier this year, but now, the city is bracing for many more.
