Barely Used Randall's Island Migrant Tent City Will Close, Mayor Says

NEW YORK CITY — The controversial and, ultimately, mostly empty tent city on Randall's Island for asylum seekers will close next week, Mayor Eric Adams said.

A new migrant facility in the Watson Hotel in Midtown will replace the Randall's Island tent city, Adams said in an announcement late Thursday afternoon.

The city will use 600 rooms in the Watson to help adult single men who are asylum seekers, he said.

“The city is currently caring for over 17,500 asylum seekers, a number that continues to grow steadily," Adams said in a 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.”

Roughly 23,800 asylum seekers, mostly from South America, have arrived in New York City in recent months, with many of them being shipped on buses from Texas, city officials said.

As the influx of migrants had threatened to overwhelm the city's shelters and cost $1 billion, Adams declared a state of emergency in October.

But the flow of asylum seekers has slowed in recent weeks, in part because of President Joe Biden changing U.S. border policies regarding Venezuelan migrants.

The slowdown coincided with the opening of the much-touted and much-criticized Randall's Island tent city.

Within days of its opening, the 500-bed facility only had five migrants, the New York Post first reported.

City officials have not released numbers on how many migrants were housed in the Randall's Island facility.