Senegalese man running 'illegal' migrant shelter to house 87 in his shop basement is busted for having a SECOND location where 60 were spending the night

The Senegalese man behind a 'illegal' migrant shelter that held 87 people in his shop's basement has been busted for running another operation where 60 asylum seekers were found spending the night. 

Ebou Sarr, 47, was caught running a migrant shelter in Queens Monday, and on Wednesday another location that he ran in the Bronx was discovered. 

Officials told PIX11 that at least 45 confined beds were found inside a basement and first floor of a closed store on East Kingsbridge Road. 

The migrants were removed from their housing and taken to city-run shelters, as some of the occupants said that they would rather live on the street.

On Wednesday, Sarr said: 'This was their choice, they choose to be here than being over there in the shelter.'

'If you ask each and everyone of them they will tell you this, they did not want to go.'

Sarr, a migrant himself who came to the US years ago, said that he felt compelled to set up the shelters.

He had been charging a monthly fee of $300 for shelter and food, earning himself $26,100 a month, or $313,000 a year in the process for the shelter in Queens that was run out a furniture store. 

Officials made the first shocking discovery on Monday during a building inspection at the business in Queens after a 311 call prompted an investigation. 

The call had been made to complain about a large number of e-bikes in the rear yard of the property.

The FDNY said that around 40 cramped beds were found on the ground floor of the property and in the cellar at that location. 

Those migrants were transferred to another shelter in the Bronx and a vacate order has been issued for the building over safety concerns following the discovery.

Sarr continued: 'They[the city] promise that they have places for them. They lie, there was no beds. They end up in the streets again roaming around.' 

'We came up with this idea that we can do this on our own, so we came up with a strategy to put this money together to help ourselves.' 

'They have lied to them in the past, they are lying again. We have to change the way we are doing things. We are all human, we are all equal.'

'Safety was our number one priority, I hope they change their laws. People can not be sleeping around on the streets like animals, like dogs.

'Even animals don't sleep on the streets, how about human beings. They don't care because it is not their people.'

Fire officials added that they eventually found that people were taking turns to sleep due to the limited number of beds.

Most of the migrants are from Senegal- a country in West Africa. 

On Tuesday, Sarr told PIX11 that he had been providing them with breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

There were two bathrooms available, as with Sarr explained that he had been giving out memberships to Planet Fitness so those living in the basement could shower.

On Tuesday, deputy mayor for housing Maria Torres-Springer said: '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.

'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.'

Mayor Eric Adams has been accused of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on migrants by doling out no-bid contracts.

City Comptroller Brad Lander made the claim in an audit of migrant-related contracts released on Tuesday, identifying 340 asylum-seeker contracts representing an estimated contract value of $5.7 billion.

According to the audit, most of those contracts were procured on an emergency basis, allowing the city to waive the usual competitive bidding requirements. 

In one case, a vendor charged the city $185.63 per hour for shelter supervisors, totaling nearly $1,500 per eight-hour shift.

The audit noted that the city's migrant crisis has been ongoing since the spring of 2022, with Adams' state of emergency declaration coming in October of that year, and questions why contracts are still being procured on an emergency basis.

Last week, Adams announced his administration will cut an additional 10 percent in migrant spending and pause drastic budget cuts to other departments after he was slammed for giving migrants taxpayer funded debit cards.

The Big Apple has been inundated with an influx of migrants that have cost taxpayers $12.65 billion in 2023. 

More than 170,000 migrants have arrived in the city since the spring of 2022, and the crisis is only deepening as they continue to be bussed from Texas where record numbers are entering.