NEW YORK CITY (AP) — Brad Song thought his electric bike was stolen for the second time in less than a month after he made a delivery for the Chinese food app Fantuan Delivery. Seven strangers surrounded the Chinese immigrant and pushed him off the scooter. He was rescued when a nearby motorist revved his engine, scaring the assailants.
His brakes were broken and the screen of a phone he used for navigation was shattered. Song, however, was shaken by the February attack in New York, but his bike and body emerged unscathed.
Asylum seekers have been drawn to food delivery in New York and other major cities, attracted by the abundance of customers and the ease with which they can get started. But the job comes with dangers, particularly thieves who target food delivery bikes. Newly arrived asylum seekers are easy targets. Some work without legal authorization, which can make them afraid to seek help in an emergency.
Many delivery workers were unhappy with the police response and joined forces.
Juan Solano, who emigrated from the Mexican state of Guerrero in 2017, founded E l Diario de los Delivery Boys en la Gran Manzana, a group of delivery workers who help recover stolen e-bikes, often with the help of monitoring devices. The group, which was founded during the pandemic, has more than 50,000 followers on Facebook and a WhatsApp channel to alert riders to robberies in real time.
Solano, 35, started working in food delivery during the pandemic, along with his nephew Sergio, whose e-bike was stolen twice.
Thieves appear to be targeting isolated areas near bridges that connect Manhattan to other boroughs, particularly those with lighter police presences, and they are particularly preying on people traveling alone.
There is a WhatsApp group called Alert Willis for workers who drive over the Willis Avenue Bridge, which connects Manhattan to the Bronx.
Sergio Solano said he recently waited for other workers to cross the Willis Avenue Bridge. After crossing, they turned back after reading on their phones that someone else had been robbed while they were traveling alone.
“The robber had some sort of weapon, but we decided to confront him anyway,” Solano said. The person was outnumbered and fled without the bike.
Dozens, even hundreds, of scooters are parked at migrant shelters in New York City. The city estimates there are 65,000 delivery riders — almost certainly an undercount — an unknown percentage of whom are newly arrived asylum seekers. A $1,000 investment for a bike is the primary requirement.
Asylum seekers must apply for work permits, which means many work under the names of people who are legally allowed to work. Heisen Mao, a delivery driver and labor organizer, says drivers without work permits typically pay an account holder between $400 and $500 a month, or about 20 percent of their earnings.
DoorDash spokesman Josh Gold said the company’s defenses against fraudulent accounts include requiring periodic selfies to verify identity. The company said bike thefts are “extremely rare.” Uber said in a statement that it has similar anti-fraud measures. Fantuan said it personally verifies the identity of every driver and warns couriers of high-crime areas.
The New York Police Department reported 11,157 thefts of bikes worth $1,000 or more from 2018 through 2023, with sharp increases to a peak of nearly 3,000 in 2020 as supply chain issues created surges in demand. The thefts have been concentrated in certain areas, with Lower Manhattan seeing the most.
Consequences can be deadly. In 2021, Francisco Villalba, 29, was fatally shot in the chest after refusing to give up his bike during recess at a playground. He had just finished a DoorDash delivery in East Harlem. His attacker was sentenced to 41 years in prison.
Tiburcio Castillo, 37, was fatally attacked on the Willis Bridge in 2022 as he rode his e-bike home from a food delivery job. After an extensive search, his family found him in a coma at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, where he died. No arrests have been made.
The police emphasize that they are vigilant against theft.
“The NYPD will respond to all calls for service and investigate all reported crimes, regardless of immigration status,” the agency said in a statement.
The surge in asylum-seeking food delivery workers reflects a massive shift in migration at the U.S. border, from mostly Mexican men trying to evade arrest to single adults, families and unaccompanied children from dozens of countries around the world surrendering to border patrol agents.
The Border Patrol has released about 1.6 million migrants with notices to appear in immigration court from January 2022 through April 2024 and about 600,000 under presidential powers known as “conditional release.” Since late 2022, the Biden administration has granted entry through new or expanded legal pathways to an additional 1 million migrants using conditional release powers at border crossings or airports to stay for up to two years and immediately obtain work authorization.
New York began seeing a surge in the spring of 2022, fueled in part by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sending busloads of people at his state’s expense. The city estimates it is currently home to about 195,000 newly arrived migrants.
Song, 30, arrived in New York last July amid a surge in Chinese citizens coming to the United States via a relatively new and dangerous route that has been popularized by social media. They start with a flight to the Ecuadorian capital of Quito. Chinese are the fourth-largest nationality, after Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Haitians, to cross the Darien Gap, according to Panamanian government data.
Chinese asylum seekers say they are trying to escape an increasingly repressive political climate and poor economic prospects.
Song’s first e-bike was stolen off the sidewalk during his lunch break. The second attack, which nearly ended in East Flushing, Queens, occurred just a month later.
“I shudder to think what would have happened if they had pulled out a knife or a gun,” Song said.
Eventually, Song bought a car so he could deliver orders.
Gustavo, an asylum seeker from Venezuela living in the former Roosevelt Hotel, a city-run shelter, switched to a moped after his electric bike was stolen 15 days after he started delivering food. He reported it to the police, but to no avail.
“I knew where it was,” said Gustavo, who declined to give his last name. “But if I had gone there, I would have beaten up the thief and then I would have been screwed, because he would have been the victim.”
Fidel Luna, who had been delivering food for an Upper Manhattan restaurant since arriving in New York from Mexico in 2020, tracked his stolen e-bike to a building in January and immediately alerted police. He said his repeated calls to police yielded no response.
Police declined to comment on his case.
Luna, 29, borrowed his brother's bike to continue working. He kept his original bike and planned to intercept it when the time came.
“I would like the police to help me, but I can't wait. I need to get my bike back.”
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This is a collaboration between journalists from Documented, an independent nonprofit newsroom dedicated to reporting with and for immigrant communities, and the Associated Press. Attanasio is an AP reporter based in New York. Ojeda, Castillo and Xu work with Documented.
