Jefferson Maldenado, a 31-year-old migrant from Ecuador, has been arrested in New York City five times since arriving in the US earlier this year.
His latest bust was for stealing a pair of pants and a beer from the Target near Herald Square.
Asked why he committed the crime, the migrant thief said, "I wanted to change my clothes and think.
"I wanted to sit down and think about my life, about what to do. Because this is not a normal world."
He was just one of five migrants in a Manhattan courtroom for arraignment one night last week.
Across New York, recently arrived migrants are flooding the criminal justice system -- at far higher rates than public officials have acknowledged.
Police sources shared with The Post a staggering estimate that as many as 75% of the people they've been arresting in Midtown Manhattan in recent months for crimes like assault, robbery and domestic violence are migrants. In parts of Queens, the figure is more than 60%, sources there estimate.
On any given day, Big Apple criminal court dockets are packed with asylum seekers who have run afoul of the law.
The problem is made much worse by sanctuary city laws that mean New York cops aren't allowed to work with ICE on cases in which they believe suspects are in the country illegally. Additionally, the NYPD says it is barred from tracking the immigration status of offenders.
This makes it almost impossible for authorities to get their arms around the problem, experts and sources on the ground say.
"New York City eliminated a tool to get rid of violent criminals. What a mess," Jim Quinn, a veteran former prosecutor at the Queens District Attorney's Office, told The Post.
"The sanctuary city law is pathetic. It's disgusting. It's crazy."
Making matters worse, police sources say, word has gotten out in the shelters about the city's lax bail guidelines -- meaning migrants know they're going to get kicked back onto the street quickly after they're nabbed.