Missing Honduran Refugee Grandmother Found In The Bronx
There’s a happy ending for the family of a missing grandmother who has a mental illness.
Margarita Bernardez, a Honduran refugee who doesn’t speak English and suffers from schizophrenia, was found Thursday (June 16) in the Bronx, N.Y. after she went missing on May 31, CBS New York reports. The 68-year-old is recovering at a local hospital
Bernardez and her family had recently arrived from Honduras to apply for refugee status in the United States. They were staying at separate family shelters in New York City when shelter staff workers misplaced her.
During the agonizing search, someone spotted Bernardez at a Bronx subway station.
"Somebody dropped the ball and let this poor woman out of a shelter and made it her responsibility to make it back to the other shelter," Judy McQuistion, a family friend, told CBS New York.
Bernardez fled her homeland with her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, to escape violence the station reported. After traveling for months from the Mexico border, they arrived in the Bronx on May 31.
The family reached PATH DHS Assessment Shelter in the Bronx, which couldn’t house all of them. They were forced to take Bernardez at 2 a.m. to the Franklin Women’s Shelter at a different Bronx location.
Her family said they went back to the Franklin shelter to check on Bernardez but were denied information for five days.
McQuistion learned that the grandmother was sent to another shelter in Harlem.
"They had a van that was leaking oil and they were concerned about the van, putting people in the van. So they gave her a [subway] MetroCard and told her to take the subway, which was three stops away," McQuistion stated.
She said the shelter’s staff didn’t report her missing until the family called the police on June 6.
According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, the number of refugees and asylum seekers from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala has exploded over the past five years to nearly 600,000. The crisis is blamed on worsening crime and violence fuelled by drug cartels and gangs, as well as the impact of climate emergencies and the COVID-19 pandemic.
