East Side Migrant Centers on Randall's Is. and E. 97th St. among 6 in Manhattan to Close

The tents on Randall’s Island and a former converted college dorm on E. 97th St. will be among the emergency shelters on the East Side of Manhattan that will closing in the coming months as part of Mayor Eric Adams recently announced plan to close 25 shelters citywide.

The Randall’s Island shelter, which at its peak housed up to 3,000 migrants in massive white tents that were set up on youth soccer and baseball fields, is the biggest Manhattan site on the closure list. Randall’s Island was already slated to close for good by Feb. 25 even before the announcement on Dec. 10, which was made as Adams himself was heading to a crypto currency conference in Puerto Rico.

The 97th Street Dorms on 3rd Ave, which at one time were dorms housing students attending Hunter College, is the only other East Side closure. There are a total of six closing in Manhattan. The other closures in the borough include The Americana Inn on W. 38th St.; the Amsterdam Humanitarian Response and Relief Center at 205-207 W. 85th St.; and the Stratford Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center, housed in the former Stratford Inn at 117 West 70th Street. A sixth Manhattan emergency shelter located in Hell’s Kitchen at the Hotel Merit on W. 46th St. between Ninth and Tenth Avenues already saw the last of its migrant check out in early November, but it was also included in the announcement.

The most high profile center in the latest closure news is Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennet Field. The fear by some advocates for asylum seekers was that President-elect Donald Trump was going to target migrants there because the shelter is the only one that sits on federal land. Adams however did not mention Trump in the announcement that said the center there is closing.

More than 223,000 asylum-seekers have arrived in NYC since the spring of 2022, some of whom were bused to New York by the Republican governor of Texas, Gregg Abbott. At its peak, the city was operating 210 shelters across the city. One of the shelters in the Times Square area was the scene of wild brawl in February in which two police were knocked to the ground and kicked and beaten by a group of up to eight migrants after police had tried to take one into custody. Eventually seven people were indicted for the attack. That center was not among those slated for closure.

Adams has called the influx of migrants a “crisis,” pointing out the migrants who entered New York City over the past two years exceeds the population of Albany. He said it has cost the city over $7 billion and was responsible for a deep round of budget cuts a year ago. Most, but not all, of last year’s cuts were restored in the current budget as the migrant surge eased, not just in NYC but across the country.

Adams has repeatedly called on the Biden Administration to pick up some of the costs, but said his pleas fell on deaf ears in Washington, which he complained has only chipped in about $200 million in migrant relief funds.

Migrants rights activists slammed Adams for the 30-60 day limits on shelter stays, which they argue lead to homelessness and was disruptive to kids who are entitled to a public school education, which becomes tougher if they are forced to move from shelter to shelter.

NYC has a guaranteed “right to shelter” stemming from a 1979 court case, which Adams has sought to amend since asylum-seeking arrivals began picking up in 2022. Adams has insisted set the 30-60 limits to comply with the right to shelter law but at the same time made the emergency housing very short term to prevent the city from going broke. A total of 55,000 migrants are reportedly still housed in city shelters.

Adams cited a sharp decline in asylum-seekers arriving in NYC over 22 straight weeks, leading to the lowest levels of new arrivals in 17 months, as one reason for the newly-announced shelter closures. He added that he was in alignment with President Joe Biden’s implementation of stricter border policies at the federal level in June that has seen the number of migrant arrivals plunge in New York City and nationally. Adams said the number of migrants checking out of the city’s shelters in recent months has exceeded the number of incoming asylum seekers.

“Our intensive case management, paired with 30- and 60-day policies, have helped more than 170,000 migrants take their next steps on their journeys, because migrants don’t come here to live in our shelter system—they come here to pursue the American Dream,” Adams said in a statement.

He said more shelters will be closing in the months ahead. “We’re going to continue looking for more sites to consolidate and close, and more opportunities to save taxpayer money, as we continue to successfully manage this response.”

Adams stirred more controversy over his approach to immigration recently, by announcing that he was considering partnering with the incoming Trump administration to deport asylum-seekers who commit crimes, a task that is complicated because the NYPD is barred by city laws from working with immigration agents. NYC is considered a sanctuary city.

He was asked at a Dec. 9 press conference if would be willing to hand over migrants accused of a crime to federal authorities before a verdict and before a sentencing is announced. He did not give a direct answer but said he was going to kick ideas around with Trump’s border czar, Thoman Homan.

“My desire is to give the member of the public who’s the victim of that crime. They should serve their sentence. I want to hear what the border czar, what his ideas are, because justice is making sure that person served a sentence.” But he said he would not object if the sentence was served in a country outside of the United States.

Adams was scheduled to meet with Homan on Dec. 12.