A migrant at a Big Apple shelter was busted for allegedly pummeling his wife Thursday night —the latest in a disturbing spate of domestic violence incidents among asylum seekers that advocates say “is not surprising.”
Christopher Aquillon allegedly punched his 33-year-old wife in the face as she held her 2-year-old son, while demanding her cell phone inside the shelter on Third Avenue near East 97th Street in Carnegie Hill, according to the sources.
The wife handed over the phone, but Aquillon, 38, allegedly punched her a second time as he scrolled through it — leaving her with a gash on her forehead at around at 10:40 p.m., the sources said.
The spouse-on-spouse attack came after stats this week revealed at least 20 domestic violence arrests at the Roosevelt Hotel, which houses asylum seekers, since May.
In total, domestic violence incidents accounted for more than half of all crime at the formerly swanky Midtown hotel.
The abuse may be tied to factors such as “crowded conditions” at the hotel, along with migrants’ traumatic backgrounds, said Dorchen Leidholdt, Director of the Sanctuary for Families Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services.
“Many if not most of them have survived highly traumatic events in their home countries, where they have failed to receive protection from gang and gender-based violence, separation from families, dire poverty, and a dangerous, life-threatening journey to safety in the US,” said Leidholdt, whose group offers legal help to survivors of gender violence.
“The crowded conditions in the hotels where migrant families have been provided lifesaving refuge are not conducive to healing and recovery. It is not surprising that there have been 41 arrests in the Roosevelt Hotel over the past several months, half of which involve domestic violence.”
Many asylum-seeking moms feel trapped in relationships with abusers because they have children in already extremely stressful circumstances, said one migrant woman, who was staying at the shelter on Third Avenue.
“[Domestic violence] happens, of course. Everyone knows someone who has gone through it, but there’s not much anyone can do in complicated matters like that, especially for people like us and when there’s kids,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified.
In the case Thursday, the mother walked into the 23rd Precinct in East Harlem to report that her husband had punched her repeatedly, according to the police sources.
Cops called Aquillon to come to the station house, where he was cuffed, the sources said. He was charged with assault and acting in a manner injurious to a child.
The shelter on Third Avenue is a former student housing complex that was intended to lodge more than 500 migrant families with kids, Mayor Eric Adams said in late June.
On Thursday, six residents of a Brooklyn migrant shelter were arrested — three of them for assault on an officer — for allegedly getting rowdy during an NYPD crackdown on illegal scooters, sources said.
Cops showed up at the men’s shelter at 455 Jefferson Street in East Williamsburg after the department got several complaints from the community about mopeds, scooters, and bikes parked in the area.
Some of the residents got out of hand when cops began confiscating the vehicles, sparking a scuffle that led to the arrests, law enforcement sources told The Post.
