Deep blue New York will shutter 12 migrant shelters before the end of the year, just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Two hotels-turned-migrant shelters in the city have already closed – the Hotel Merit in Manhattan and the Quality Inn JFK in Queens – while 10 other shelter facilities across the state are earmarked for closure by Dec. 31, New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ office told Fox News Digital.
The 10 shelters are located in Albany, Dutchess, Erie, Orange and Westchester counties and had been put into operation by the city when it ran out of space, such was the sheer scale of the crisis.
BLUE CITIES RUSH TO DISMANTLE MIGRANT SHELTERS AS TRUMP INAUGURATION APPROACHES
Migrants outside one of two shelters in Brooklyn on July 24, 2024 in New York City. New York will shutter 12 migrant shelters before the end of the year, just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images, Brandon Bell/Getty Images.)
Additionally, New York City’s sprawling migrant shelter on Randall’s Island, which was designed to house up to 3,000 people, is slated to shut down by February, a couple of weeks after Trump’s inauguration to a second term on Jan. 20, 2025.
The closures come as Adams revealed Monday that the city has catered to more than 223,000 migrants and asylum seekers who have arrived in New York City since the spring of 2022, which he said equated to about half the population of the state capital of Albany.
City taxpayers were footing a $352 nightly bill per migrant with just $130 of that going to the hotels for housing. The rest went to costs like social services, food and cleaning, according to the New York Post.
There are currently 58,000 migrants still staying in taxpayer-funded shelters, the mayor’s office told Fox News Digital. There are around 210 city-run shelter sites scattered across the five boroughs, according to the Post. The city’s website states that the crisis could cost taxpayers around $12 billion over the next three fiscal years without policy changes.
The city said the declining numbers of migrants arriving in New York is the reason for the closures and thanked the federal government and executive orders issued by the Biden-Harris administration for the reduction.
In September, there were 101,790 encounters at the border, the lowest number since February 2021, and there have been no major signs of a significant increase in numbers since then. The Post reported that in the week ending Nov. 10, more than 600 new asylum seekers arrived in Gotham.
Migrants walk to the shelters at Floyd Bennett Field in the Brooklyn borough of New York on Feb. 3, 2024. ( Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP)
“Our staff is on hand to help guests plan for next steps as the city consolidates its operations,” a city hall spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
“Over the past two years, our teams have accomplished the Herculean task of providing compassionate care for a population twice the size of Albany and saving taxpayers billions of dollars,” Adams said in a statement.
“We’ve focused on helping people take their next steps out of shelter and that focus is paying off. And with our census declining for the past 19 weeks in a row, it’s clear that our efforts are working. The new policies we’re implementing today will build on our successes, save taxpayers millions, and help even more migrants take their next steps towards fulfilling their American Dream.”
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Adams also revealed that migrant families who were issued their second 60-day eviction notice can stay in the same shelter they were previously assigned to if they still need more time in the system.
He touted the move as saving “taxpayers millions of dollars,” making it easier for those children to continue attending their same public schools and saving the city hundreds of thousands spent on busing those students to those schools.
A migrant caravan walks through Tapachula, Mexico, on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Edgar H. Clemente)
However, the easing of the eviction rule for families was not enough for a group of about 50 left-wing activists who stormed City Hall on Wednesday during a hearing on the shelter rule for adults, which permanently evicts migrant adults from city shelters after 30 days.
“Immigrants are welcome here – Trumpian policy is not!” members of the Jews For Racial & Economic Justice chanted from the mezzanine while unfurling three banners reading: “Mayor Adams: end shelter evictions,” “Let all New Yorkers stay” and “Housing justice now.”
The group was removed from the chamber after about two minutes. The group said in a statement that the eviction rule is a “cruel and destabilizing policy” and is a direct violation of the city’s controversial decades-old right to shelter rule. The rule was initially put in place on the premise of sheltering the homeless.
While the flow of migrants has slowed in recent months, some experts have raised concerns that migrants may make a last-ditch effort to cross the border before Trump clamps down on illegal crossings.
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Pro-migrant demonstrators at City Hall on Tuesday demanded that all evictions of migrants be stopped. (Jews For Racial & Economic Justice)
For instance, around 1,500 migrants have formed a caravan in southern Mexico, just over the border from Guatemala, and hope to cross before Trump takes office.
Trump has promised to seal the southern border and carry out the largest deportation operation in the history of the U.S. He has appointed hardliner South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to serve as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, while Tom Homan will be the new “border czar.”
Additionally, he has also pledged to end the use of parole programs by the Biden administration that allow migrants to enter in via the expanded “lawful pathways” and to shut down the Biden administration’s CBP One app, which allows migrants to apply for asylum appointments while in Mexico.
