NYC’s ‘reticketing center’ gives migrants free one-way airfares to anywhere else but here

New York City is now steering migrants to a new “reticketing center” where they can secure a free one-way plane ticket anywhere in the world — as Mayor Eric Adams scrambles to free up space in the Big Apple’s already-overburdened shelter system.

The center, which is located in a repurposed church office in the East Village, was recently set up with the sole purpose of purchasing tickets for asylum seekers who want to leave town, City Hall officials confirmed to The Post.

“With no sign of a decompression strategy in the near future, we have established a reticketing center for migrants,” a spokesperson for Mayor Adams said.

“Here, the city will redouble efforts to purchase tickets for migrants to help them take the next steps in their journeys, and it helps us triage operations at The Roosevelt for new arrivals.”

The cost of buying a plane ticket is, in some cases, cheaper than the $380 it sets the city back per day to house an asylum seeker in one of its shelters.

Some of the migrants who have taken up the city’s offer have already booked plane tickets as far away as Morocco, Politico reported.

It wasn’t immediately clear where the asylum seekers — or how many of them — have requested to go.

Several migrants who spoke to The Post outside the reticketing center on Friday claimed officials had told them to head to the address after reaching their stay limit at city-run shelters – but failed to mention it was for the purpose of getting an airfare.   

“They didn’t tell me anything.  They discharged me and said to go to this address,” a 30-year-old migrant from Guinea said.

“I expected when they gave me this address I was going to stay here for a little while until I find a solution.”

A group of four migrant friends from Venezuela and Ecuador said they came to the East Village location for assistance after being booted from their shelter four days ago, but said they had nowhere they wanted to be flown.

“We are not going anywhere else,” one of the men, Jimmy, 30, said.  

He added that they turned down the airfares because they would only be “helpless” when they arrived at a new destination.

“They have no rooms for us or anything … just the tickets. They can’t help with anything else,” Jimmy said.

“We are worried because we’ve been sleeping in the streets for four days,” he continued, adding their goal is to “find jobs so they can rent a room together before it gets cold.”

Another migrant, identified only as Alex, said he, too, turned down a plane ticket out of the Big Apple.

“They offered but I refused because I’ll have work permit in a month,” the 31-year-old, who is originally from Russia, said.  

The city has been dishing out free airfares to migrants who want them for several months now, but the establishment of the reticketing center is part of its aggressive new strategy to help cope with the relentless influx of asylum seekers pouring into Gotham.

Separately, the mayor has imposed the 30-day limit — down from the prior 60-day limit — for how long a single adult migrant can remain in a city-run shelter in a bid to free up space.

After reaching their deadlines, the migrants have to reapply in order to get back into the system.

Less than 20% of migrants who were given a vacate notice subsequently reapplied to remain in the shelter system as of Sunday, the latest City Hall data shows.

The push comes after Hizzoner warned this week that migrants would soon be sleeping on the streets because the Big Apple had reached “full capacity.”

“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,” the mayor said.

More than 130,000 migrants have flooded into the Big Apple since spring 2022 and the city is currently putting up over 65,000 asylum seekers at its various shelters, the latest City Hall figures show.