The Randalls Island migrant shelter is closing this winter as the number of asylum seekers in the city’s shelter system has decreased, Mayor Adams announced Wednesday.
The shelter will close at the end of February and the land return to use as athletic fields and parkland. Already, one of the biggest tents, which held more than 750 cots, has been taken down, according to a release from the Mayor’s Office.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Adams said, “but make no mistake, thanks in large part to our smart management strategies and successful advocacy, we have turned the corner on this crisis.”
The controversial facility, among the largest shelter sites in the city, caught heat both from locals with quality-of-life concerns and advocates pushing for more stability for migrants.
“Cramming people into congregate settings in tents — in locations far away from public transportation, grocery stores and jobs — has been a recipe for failure since Day One. It is welcome news that the city will be closing the Randalls Island HERRC,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in a statement, adding that the city should likewise close the family mega-shelter at Floyd Bennet Field.
Several stabbings, bloody brawls and even fatal incidents have also plagued the Randalls Island shelter, which houses more than 2,000 people. In January, a man was stabbed to death outside the shelter. Five men were later charged. A Venezuelan mother was killed by a stray bullet outside the shelter in July. And in August, a man was stabbed in the stomach.
In recent months, a growing encampment outside the shelter on Randall’s Island had grown, largely made up of people who used to reside in the shelter but were given the boot due to the city’s shelter stay limits.
The Randalls Island Park Alliance spoke out against the shelter and even threatened legal action against it, arguing the place cut down on important park space.
The number of asylum seekers in city shelters has been falling since early summer, and is now at its lowest point in more than a year, according to City Hall.
The mayor attributed the decrease in new arrivals to the city to measures the administration has taken to push migrants out of the shelter system — including reticketing (giving migrants tickets to travel to other locales outside of New York City) and 30- and 60-day limits to shelter stays.
The Biden administration has also put in place new restrictions on asylum, cutting down on people crossing the southern border.
Nearly 215,000 migrants have come through New York City’s shelter system since spring 2022, and about 64,000 were in the system as of this August, according to data from the city Comptroller’s Office.
The city had previously opened shelter for asylum seekers on the island in 2022, only to shut it down within weeks after it went largely unused.