Migrants set up ‘mini-city’ under Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, complete with ‘nighttime market’

As New Yorkers traverse the 11.7 miles that is the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a stretch underneath the motorway is bustling with more than 200 migrants who have established what the New York Post describes as a “mini-city.”

According to The Post, the encampment features a “nighttime market — where asylum seekers peddle everything from food to haircuts.”

Police and Sanitation workers tried during the summer months “to clear out a dozen or so migrants living in tents under the BQE at Park Avenue and Hall Street in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill,” but the location “is now hotter than ever.”

Local residents are outraged.

“The problem hasn’t gotten any better, it’s gotten worse and continues to get worse,” a Clinton Hill father of two fumed. “I’d rather see the tents. It literally looks and smells horrible down there now.”

The Post describes the disturbing scene:

The migrants have set up temporary, open-air homes by cramming mattresses, tables and other accessories between rows of parked vehicles along a garbage-strewn section under the BQE.

Most are from Latin American countries or are French-speaking Africans.

“There’s smells of urine and trash everywhere, and it’s just sad that the city doesn’t seem to care about the people that live here, that are from here, that pay taxes,” another angry resident stated. “New Yorkers seem to be second-class citizens in all of this — and that’s the most upsetting part of it all.”

A Post reporter ventured to the migrant hotspot and found “six men sitting in folding chairs peddling Nike and other name-brand sneakers lined across two tables.”

Byron Espinoza, an Ecuadorian migrant, provides haircuts at 15 bucks a pop.

As BizPac Review reported, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Tuesday that the Big Apple is officially “out of room.”

“I don’t know how to get this any clearer,” he said at his weekly question-and-answer session. “When you are out of room that means you are out of room.”

“I want to be clear, the visual signs of this crisis in this city, people are going to start to see it,” Adams warned. “We are out of room, and it’s not if people will be sleeping on the streets, it’s when. We are at full capacity.”

City-run shelters are not an option for many of the migrants The Post interviewed. Either they have no desire to stay in them, or they are kicked out after the city’s maximum stay of 30 days and are unable to find a permanent place to go.

“It’s very hard,” Ecuadorian migrant Jose Caiza said.

He took to the streets after staying for 30 days at the Hall Street shelter.

“[The immigration system] has no heart,” Caiza said. “We are human beings. We have the right to seek opportunities in our lives.”

On X, reactions to the mini-city are understandably frustrated.

“It’s hard to believe that 2 years ago if you placed your bag on a subway seat you were at risk of getting a ticket from a cop,” wrote one user. “Now NYPD allows this.”

“The new Ellis Island,” quipped another.

“Please remove them NOW!!!!!” demanded a third. “They have a choice, an official shelter or a one way ticket out of NYC.”


As one user noted, “Import the third world, become the third world.”

Melissa Fine

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