NYC Plans 2 New Large-Scale Asylum Seeker Centers: See Where

NEW YORK CITY — New York City soon will have 14 large-scale humanitarian centers to handle the never-ending influx of asylum seekers entering the city.

Two new centers in Brooklyn and Queens will be converted from smaller existing "emergency respite centers," Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.

The first opened that day at Crowne Plaza JFK Airport, which is planned to house more than 330 families, officials said. A second center at 47 Hall St. near Brooklyn Navy Yard will support an additional 1,400 adults when it opens in the coming weeks, on top of the hundreds already housed there.

"The transition of these two emergency respite sites to humanitarian relief centers will provide, when combined, thousands of individuals with a range of services and help them reach their final destinations," Adams said in a statement.

More than 52,000 asylum seekers are in the city's care, officials said. They've been housed among roughly 180 emergency shelters and 12 large-scale facilities officially dubbed "humanitarian relief centers."

The influx has become one of the defining issues of Adams' mayoralty, with nary a week passing without some point of contention or controversy.

Advocates this week criticized city officials after a Gothamist report outlined that migrants arriving at Port Authority Bus Terminal no longer will be met with free buses. The asylum seekers are now directed to walk nearly a mile through busy, unfamiliar Manhattan streets to an intake center, according to the report.

The Gothamist report drew a response, of sorts, from Fabien Levy, the mayor's press secretary. In a tweet, he compared the Gothamist headline about asylum seekers walking across Manhattan to one from NY1 about a migrant's "arduous 8-month journey to reach to the U.S."

"A little shot/chaser to start the day," Levy wrote.

Levy's tweet drew many negative responses online.

"Holy s--- this is so gross," one wrote.

"What point are you making?" another wrote. "They've been through hell already, so it's okay to add to their burdens?"