RICHMOND HILL, Queens (PIX11) – An e-bike complaint led to the discovery of dozens of migrants living in the basement of a store in Queens, city officials said.
Authorities conducting an inspection found 87 people living in the basement of Sarr’s Wholesale Furniture at 132-03 Liberty Ave. in Richmond Hill at around 11:40 p.m. Monday, according to law enforcement sources. The people were moved to a migrant shelter in the Bronx, sources said.
FDNY officials said a complaint about e-bikes in the backyard prompted an investigation into the building. A 311 call led to the investigation, Mayor Eric Adams said during a news conference on Tuesday.
The basement was cluttered with mattresses and bunk beds while the backyard was littered with delivery bikes, according to video and photos from the scene.
The Department of Buildings issued a vacate order for the building due to unsafe conditions found in the basement, such as overcrowding, according to sources. The FDNY found numerous fire hazards and the New York City Emergency Management Department is helping people get further assistance, sources said.
“The system did its job,” Adams said. “It started with a 311 complaint and the city responded accordingly.”
Meera Joshi, the deputy mayor for operations, said the city has done a huge amount of outreach and education on how to safely buy and store e-bikes.
“It’s two conditions: both the migrant situation and the e-bikes. And on e-bikes, we’ve seen the tragic consequences of illegal e-bikes,” Joshi said Tuesday.
Ebou Sarr, 47, who owns the business that’s located in the building, told PIX11 News on Tuesday that he was charging migrants $300 a month to live there. He said most of the migrants are from Senegal, and that he was providing them with breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Sarr came to New York City from Senegal 30 years ago. He thought he was helping the migrants living in his business because he remembers how hard it was living in shelters and on subways when he first came to the United States, he said.
“They’re my people. I have to do something about it, so I started taking them in,” Sarr tearfully said in an interview Tuesday.
Sarr said he was also looking into buying commercial properties to house the migrants because the city wasn’t doing enough to help.
“There are a lot of people who came to this country and needed places to stay because they’re kicking them out onto the streets,” Sarr said. “The city is saying that they have no place for these people. It’s not true.”
Sarr has not been charged with any crimes.
When asked about the situation during Tuesday’s news conference, the Adams administration said that there is a housing problem in the city – but also defended its handling of the migrant crisis.
“What we discovered last night in some ways is also symptomatic of a larger crisis that this city is facing that we’ve talked about repeatedly in terms of the housing shortage in this city,” said Maria Torres-Springer, the deputy mayor for housing. “It is not a new thing that too many people make desperate choices about where to live and what to pay for and at the root of that is the fact that we haven’t built enough housing.”
Finn Hoogensen is a digital journalist who has covered local news for more than five years. He has been with PIX11 News since 2022. See more of his work here.
