NYC to close Randall's Island migrant camp in February 2025, mayor's office says

All the tent dorms housing homeless foreign migrants on Randall's Island will be shuttered by early next year, Mayor Eric Adams’ office announced Wednesday, citing a reduced influx.

The largest tent dorm, with 750 cots, has already closed, and the remaining population will gradually be reduced until the site closes completely by the end of February, according to a news release from Adams' office.

At its peak, the Randall's Island complex housed roughly 3,000 migrants in accommodations that  overtook athletic fields and other facilities otherwise available to New Yorkers.

“Following the site’s closure in February, the city will invest in restoring the remaining impacted athletic fields and parkland,” the release said.

The closure is possible because the number of migrants seeking shelter has gone down for 14 successive weeks. The flow of migrants is now at its lowest point in more than a year, according to the release, which credited a time limit on previously limitless shelter stays and the Biden administration’s tougher enforcement that began earlier this year at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In the release, Adams cautioned that the city was "not out of the woods yet," but said it had "turned the corner on this crisis."

“We’re not scrambling every day to open new shelters — we’re talking about closing them," Adams said in the release. 

Since April 2022, more than 218,000 migrants have arrived in New York City, 158,000 of whom sought room and board at city-funded homeless shelters, hotels and tent cities, as well as other complexes the city opened to house the influx.

Earlier this year, the city cut a deal with advocates that loosened a decades-old mandate to provide room and board to anyone in need.  That policy led to encampments on Randall's Island and elsewhere for migrants with nowhere else to stay.

Newsday reported last year that most migrants are not likely to formally seek asylum, and due to the high bar long set in law for achieving asylum, those who do apply are still unlikely to be granted it. Being poor and wanting a better life isn’t a basis for asylum. An unknown number are expected to stay in the country illegally anyway.

The Adams administration calls its mass shelters Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers. There are other centers at Creedmoor, near Times Square and elsewhere in the city. 

In May, the first shelter evictions began under the new policy, which in certain cases limits stays to 30 days, compared with what had been a perpetual right to shelter under a legal settlement dating back decades.

Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security reported the number of migrants crossing into the United States from the southern border fell to the lowest number of the Biden administration, since a crackdown began earlier this year. 

According to a published report, agents from the Border Patrol recorded in September about 54,000 apprehensions of migrants who had crossed into the United States between legal entry points. 

That's a lower number than the prior low of 56,000 for the Biden administration. The number was nearly 250,000 in December 2023.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.