Desperate migrants sell fruit with children on dangerous NYC highways to survive

As more and more migrants are relocated to New York after illegally crossing the southwest border, they are facing the consequences of remaining in the United States without a permit to work.

One of the results of the escalating crisis in the metropolitan area was captured on camera and reported in the New York Post on Saturday, when photos revealed images of undocumented migrants selling fruit amid traffic on dangerous highways. Some of them even had their newborn babies strapped to their backs as they sold mangoes and bottles of water.

Among the migrants who were interviewed by the Post included a 39-year old Ecuadorean migrant, Llosa selling cups of fruit with her 12-year old son, and pair of new mothers named Maria and Veronica who were selling fruit with their babies strapped to their backs.

39-year old Llosa and her 12-year old son

Llosa and her 12-year old son have been reportedly cups of fruit for $5 along the high traffic Van Wyck Expressway in Queens, near the Horace Harding Expressway. The mother and son arrived from Ecuador a month ago.

The South American country is currently facing a political standoff between conservative president Guillermo Lasso and his leftist political opponents.

“It’s dangerous,” Llosa told the Post of her bold, entrepreneurial endeavor. “It scares me for him and for me. But I need to do it to occupy my mind and earn money. Who is going to make money for us to have food if not me?”

Llosa said her 12-year old is with her because there’s nowhere else for him to go and no one else can take care of him.

“We’re not doing anything bad,” she said, telling the Post she makes about $70 a day in profits as long as she sells all the fruit she buys at local stores for a base price of about $30. “We’re not robbing anyone.”

20-year old Maria and 25-year old Veronica with newborns

Maria and Veronica have an even slightly more complicated situation. The two, young mothers of toddlers have to sell fruit and water with their children strapped to their backs amid dangerous intersections.

According to the Post, the two young mothers, also from Ecuador, are selling makeshift cups of fruit for $5 each along the intersection of Woodhaven Boulevard and Myrtle Avenue in Queens.

Maria, 20, works with her year-old infant strapped to her back and Veronica, 25, carries her 3-year-old daughter the same way, trying to hurriedly make sales when drivers stop for a red light.

“We don’t want to be on the street,” Veronica told the Post. “What we want in this country is a real job. A lot of people who see us selling here take pictures and videos of us, and say ‘You can’t be here selling like this’ and ‘Not with your baby,'” said Veronica, who lives in a two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment with five of her family members.

“Some days there is no one to leave them,” she explained “If we don’t work, we can’t pay the rent [and buy] food … for the babies.”

This, the two women contend is their dilemma.

“We can’t find jobs, that’s why we are selling,” Maria said, who shares a one room rental apartment in Jamaica with her sister, not far from John F. Kennedy International Airport.

“I don’t want to keep doing this. I want a real job, not this, she insisted. ”

Maria and Veronica say they crossed paths selling fruit at the intersection and soon became compadres. As a way to keep their spirits up and motivate one another, they work together three to four days a week in four or five hour shifts.

The pair said they usually buy about $100 of fruit every three days and sell about 10 to 15 cups per day. They survive on their leftover inventory, eating the fruit they don’t sell so it doesn’t go bad or to waste.

The Post has also reported seeing other female migrants with children selling fruit on the West Side Highway in Manhattan, FDR Drive on the East side and Harlem River Drive.

NYC elected officials express concern for migrant safety

Some NYC elected officials are expressing concern for their women’s safety.

Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) said while he feels compassion for the migrants, he is concerned they are placing themselves and their children in danger. To remedy the problem, he fired off a letter to NYC Mayor Eric Adams, asking the NYPD to start enforcing the law.

“These children are constantly exposed to toxic fumes and the possibility of a catastrophic accident that could kill or maim them and their families,” Holden charged, adding the women were also in danger of being robbed or could be coerced by gangs.

The Post said the women interviewed asserted they were working on their own volition however, merely as a method of survival.

Holden said he sent letters in August to Administration for Children’s Services Commissioner Jess Dannhauser and NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell and in Aug. 29 letters, but no action was taken.

The NYPD told Holden their goal “is not to summons or arrest our way out of the issue, but rather gain voluntary compliance” by explaining the law to homeless people and connecting them with NYC services.

The Post said it received a similar answer when it revealed in July when it exposed the East Side’s FDR Drive as a popular area for panhandlers who were placing themselves in danger just to get spare change.

But Holden says the situation has escalated dramatically with the migrant crisis.

“He said he believes the recent mass influx of asylum-seeking migrants into the city spurred a rise in mango-selling moms and their kids working the roads, too,” the Post reported.