New York’s Illegal Migrant Shelter
The facility located on public parkland at Randall’s Island appears to violate state law.
Oct 10 2024
On August 21, 2023, the Mayor Eric Adams’s administration opened a migrant shelter facility on Randall’s Island. Situated directly across the East River from the New York City Housing Authority’s East River houses, the shelter lies at the end of the Ward’s Island Bridge, a footbridge that enables pedestrians from Manhattan to cross the river to the island. The expansive tent city covers at least four athletic fields. The city quickly erected the facility, known as a Humanitarian Emergency Response & Relief Center (HERRC), under Adams’s emergency declaration, first issued on October 7, 2022, and continually extended thereafter, suspending the city’s land-use review rules and procedures. The “right to shelter” decree permits single adult men aged 23 and older a one-time, 30-day shelter stay in the HERRC. Yesterday, more than a year after it opened, Mayor Adams announced that the city plans to shutter the facility at the end of February 2025.
Since the summer of 2023, the island’s relative seclusion and ample open space have enabled the city to house 3,000 migrants—primarily men from West Africa and Latin America—away from the densely populated neighborhoods of Manhattan and the Bronx on opposite banks of the East River. Despite its isolation, the shelter has faced serious and escalating issues. On July 29 of this year, a migrant woman was shot and killed on one of the island’s soccer fields at 3:30 a.m., with two others injured in the same incident. In August, a man was stabbed near the tents. Later that month, police raided the island to clear out makeshift encampments, littered with trash, that had been set up by migrants whose shelter stays had expired.
The worsening conditions on the island made the shelter’s continued existence politically controversial. Its operation also poses a significant legal issue, overlooked by both city hall and Albany. Randall’s Island, a New York City Park, features soccer and athletic fields that youth clubs and local schools use for practices and games. Now, 9.8 acres of this public parkland have been taken over by the migrant shelter, resulting in the loss of more than 10,000 permit hours for athletic and recreation activities for the city’s youth.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-yorks-illegal-migrant-shelter
