New York City to Close Migrant Shelter on Randall’s Island in February

The decision to close the shelter complex, once the city’s largest, is a sign that the migrant crisis that has strained city resources is easing.

New York City will close a sprawling tent shelter that houses thousands of migrants on Randall’s Island and has become one of the largest and most problematic shelters in the city, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Wednesday.

City officials noted that the number of asylum seekers in city shelters has decreased for 14 consecutive weeks and is now at its lowest point in over a year, giving the city flexibility to close the shelter by the end of February.

The closing of the giant shelter, more than two years into the city’s migrant crisis, underscored how the strain on city resources has begun to markedly ease, at least for now. Still, officials will have to move many of the 2,250 adult migrants on Randall’s Island to other city shelters, and to be ready to accommodate more people if crossings at the southern border shoot up again in the future.

Mr. Adams, who once said that the migrant crisis would “destroy New York City,” struck an optimistic note in announcing the closure.

Though he warned that “we’re not out of the woods yet,” Mr. Adams, a Democrat, said the city had “turned the corner on this crisis.”

“We’re not scrambling every day to open new shelters — we’re talking about closing them,” he added.

As more than 210,000 migrants have come through the city’s shelter system since 2022, straining its capacity, officials have moved to reduce the number of people in the city’s care, including by limiting shelter stays to 30 or 60 days. And fewer migrants have arrived in the city since an executive order by President Biden in June tightened restrictions at the border, causing crossings to decrease sharply.

Together, those efforts have steadily reduced the migrant population in city shelters to 60,600 as of this week, down from nearly 65,000 in August and a peak of 69,000 in January.

The winterized dormitory-style complex was built atop recreational fields on Randall’s Island, an isolated strip of land in the East River between Queens and Manhattan. The shelter was at one point the city’s largest for migrants, housing more than 3,000 adults and providing them with cots, case workers, a cafeteria, bathrooms and showers. But the shelter also became a source of pressing concern.

The Randall’s Island Park Alliance, a nonprofit organization that helps maintain the island, threatened to sue the city after the shelter was erected, arguing that it was an illegal takeover of public parkland.

“The administration heard our concerns, and we appreciate them working with us on this issue,” Deborah Maher, the president of the alliance, said in a statement on Wednesday. “We look forward to working with NYC Parks to restore this important resource, and welcoming back thousands of children from across the city to their newly restored sports fields as soon as possible.”

Reports of petty thefts and brawls among migrants have been common inside the shelter, where migrants sleep in rows of back-to-back military cots. The grounds outside the shelter also became the site of occasional violence, including a stabbing in August and a shooting in July that left one Venezuelan mother dead and injured two other migrants.

Outside the shelter, a makeshift encampment of homeless migrants also popped up, despite the city’s efforts to take it down. Many migrants who opted to sleep outside said they felt unsafe inside the shelter, and lobbed complaints about the quality of the food and rude behavior by some staff members.

As problems at the shelter flared this summer, city officials announced that they had moved 800 migrants, or more than 25 percent of the shelter’s population, out of Randall’s Island in an effort to make the situation more manageable.

On Wednesday, City Hall indicated that it would continue to reduce the number of migrants in the shelter over the coming months to gradually restore the athletic fields and parkland it occupies.

The New York Immigration Coalition welcomed the closure of the shelter, describing the site as inhumane and “a failure of leadership.”

“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,” Murad Awawdeh, the president and chief executive of the coalition, said in a statement.

It is not the first time the city has moved to close a migrant shelter on the island.

Mr. Adams opened a similar 84,400-square-foot facility in October 2022, as thousands of asylum seekers were bused from Texas, only to announce its closure a month later after the influx of migrants slowed, temporarily, to a trickle.

The city erected the shelter again in August 2023 as the number of asylum seekers skyrocketed, turning the tent complex on Randall’s Island into one of the most visible symbols of the migrant crisis.

Our Coverage of the Adams Administration

• Adams Indictment: Federal prosecutors unveiled a five-count indictment against Mayor Eric Adams, charging him with bribery conspiracy, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.
• What Happens Next?: The indictment of Adams prompted calls for his resignation, but there is no legal requirement that he leave office. Gov. Kathy Hochul has the power to remove him.
• Federal Investigations Swirl: The case against the mayor is among several federal corruption investigations that have reached people in Adams’s orbit.
• Housing Proposal: Adams’s plan to ease the city’s housing shortage by making way for more than 100,000 new homes cleared the City Planning Commission, setting up a tougher fight between the administration and the City Council.
• Stop and Frisk: The N.Y.P.D.’s discipline for illegal street detentions is lax at every level — a failure that reaches all the way to the top of the force — according to a review ordered by a federal judge.