A migrant family from Venezuela left the tent complex used as shelter at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn on Jan. 9. New York City evacuated on about 500 families with children — nearly 2,000 people in total — from a massive tent shelter ahead of heavy rains and wind expected to hit the area. (Kirsten Luce, New York Times/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Minnesota has emerged as a top destination for migrants accepting free plane tickets to leave New York City, as homeless shelters there strain to house a record surge of asylum-seekers.

Data released by the city shows that over roughly the past two years, 1,177 migrants have taken tickets to Minnesota — the fifth most popular destination. Illinois ranked first as a destination for 2,369 migrants, followed by other cities in New York state, and Texas and Florida.

More than 168,500 asylum-seekers have arrived in New York City over the past 20 months, after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending buses of migrants there and to other Democratic-led cities from the southern border.

As other migrants followed on their own, the city faced a multibillion-dollar crisis as it sought to comply with a court-ordered "right to shelter" law and its hotels and homeless shelters overflowed with newcomers. Mayor Eric Adams began a program to offer one-way tickets to migrants who vacated city shelters at the end of a new 30-day limit for individuals and 60-day limit for families. Newsweek first reported the destination numbers this month. Other top states include Colorado, Georgia and California.

It's unclear how many of the migrants from New York have turned to shelters in Minnesota and how many found housing on their own; nor are their national origins known.

But starting a year ago, Hennepin County's family shelters began overflowing as hundreds of Ecuadorian migrants arrived — some from New York and other cities, and many straight from the southern border. Now, more than half of the 491 families in Hennepin County's shelters are new arrivals, and the system is at 410% of normal capacity.

"Like other major U.S jurisdictions, we have seen an influx of new arrivals from Latin America over the past 14 months," county spokeswoman Maria Baca said in a statement.

Baca said the county offers any new arrival much of the same help that it offers any family in need, and that the county is applying lessons garnered from its responses to immigrants from Afghanistan and Ukraine in recent years.

Minnesota's number of Ecuadorians with pending immigration cases has shot up dramatically: from 2,735 in the fiscal year ending in September 2022 to 7,779 the year after. Now that number has climbed to 9,347. Minnesota's immigration court in Fort Snelling now has the third-highest concentration of Ecuadorians, after New York and New Jersey. Overall, a record 35,443 pending cases await the state's immigration court.

A worker directed school buses to line up at the tent complex used as a shelter for migrant families at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn earlier this week. (Kirsten Luce, New York Times/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Minneapolis spokesman Casper Hill said the city has not received any information from New York City about reticketing to Minnesota. Minneapolis "has been actively engaged with State and County offices, other jurisdictions and nonprofit organizations on coordinated services for the influx of new migrants arriving in the Minneapolis area," he said in an email.

Many of New York City's asylum-seekers have sought to connect with friends, family or networks across the country, and already more than half have taken the next step on their journeys, according to a statement from Adams' spokesperson. The city is "laser-focused" on using intensive case management, reticketing and legal support to help people move from shelters and stabilize their lives, the spokesperson added, but New York needs more assistance from the federal government.

New York needs the U.S. government to "finish the job it started," the statement said, and help, including expediting work authorizations for asylum-seekers and sending more money to the city.