Mayor Adams to close Randall’s Island tent shelter for asylum seekers

The city has decided to shut down a tent facility for migrants on Randalls Island, in yet another shift in Mayor Eric Adams’ efforts to cope with the unexpected arrival of more than 23,000 migrants in recent months, many of whom were bused into New York from Texas.

The tent shelter has been assailed by members of the City Council and immigrant rights activists since it opened Oct. 19, but praised by some of the migrants who stayed there.

The closure of the facility is scheduled for next week and was first reported by the news site City Limits. In a news release Thursday night, the city said the occupants of the Randalls Island facility would be provided with transportation to the Watson Hotel in midtown Manhattan, whose 600 rooms would now be used to house asylum-seekers.

The unexpected influx of migrant arrivals threatened to strain the city’s shelter system to the breaking point, and Adams warned in October that it could cost the city $1 billion to address what he described as a “humanitarian crisis.”

But the arrivals slowed to a trickle after the Biden administration shifted its immigration policies late last month and began expelling new arrivals back to Mexico, easing those pressures and leaving the Randalls Island facility less than half full. Nevertheless, Adams said in a statement on Thursday that the city was currently providing for the needs of more than 17,500 asylum-seekers.

“We continue to welcome asylum-seekers arriving in New York City with compassion and care,” Adams said in the statement. “We will continue to pivot and shift as necessary to deal with this humanitarian crisis, but it’s clear that we still need financial assistance from our state and federal partners.”

The tent facility, which was designated for single adult men, is winterized and holds 500 beds, as well as a recreation center and cafeteria. Some migrants who stayed at the shelter praised the amenities, which included telephones they could use to dial home, and televisions.

But it is located on Randalls Island, a windy and out-of-the-way corner of the city. The island also houses other homeless shelters, but is perhaps best known for hosting summer music festivals and as the entrance to a turbulent tidal strait called Hell Gate.

The island contains no homes or businesses, and the location was criticized almost immediately by members of the City Council, who said it could be inhumane in cold weather. Occupants of the tent had to go outside to use the bathroom and retrieve their belongings from lockers to do their laundry.

Joshua Goldfein, a staff lawyer for the Legal Aid Society, which represents the group that monitors conditions at city homeless shelters, also said the facility did not comply with city rules that governed “congregate settings” because the beds were too close together and too many of them were crammed into one room. Legal Aid had also received complaints from migrants who said the heating system in the tent did not keep it warm enough, he said.

He applauded the city decision to shut down the facility Thursday.

“It’s like they developed a model that didn’t take into account all of the experience that the city has for decades for how to provide services to people,” Goldfein said. “They wanted to reinvent the wheel and people were not comfortable with that, and also they were cold.”

New York City has struggled to respond to the unexpected influx of migrants from Texas, which had been used by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, as a tactic to pressure Washington to tighten immigration law.

But the crisis, and the public spotlight it cast on New York and its elected leaders, has changed how the city responds to immigrant arrivals, who have often been left to fend for themselves or to rely on the assistance of nonprofit groups and immigrants who arrived before them.

The news that the Randalls Island tent facility will close came as a surprise to the occupants, who were informed of their imminent change of circumstances by a reporter Thursday night.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Ismael Guevara, 48, from Venezuela, said. He said he did not know what housing options the city would prove, or where he would go once the tent was shut down.

“I have to see what they’re going to do and what they’re planning,” he said. “Then I’ll know what decision to make.”