The decision was confirmed yesterday by Anne Williams-Isom, the newly elected deputy mayor of the Big Apple, who highlighted how the reduction in weekly asylum seeker arrivals has allowed the city to emerge from the emergency phase.
“We are out of the crisis phase of this” Williams-Isom said. “We are not out of the woods, but we do think we are in a much better place than we were in the spring of 2022.”
The site, which had hosted thousands of migrants with weekly peaks of 4,000 arrivals, has only accommodated 700 people in the past week. At its peak capacity, Randall’s Island provided shelter for over 3,000 people. Although the current number of residents is 2,250, the remaining guests will gradually be transferred elsewhere.
Currently, the migrant population in city shelters has decreased from over 69,000 in January to around 60,000. New York City officials attribute these improvements to federal policies introduced by the Biden administration, which have significantly reduced the influx of migrants from the southern border.
Despite the closure of the center, 14 other shelters will remain active, although further closures are not ruled out. Camille Joseph Varlack, the mayor’s chief of staff, stated that the Hall Street site in Brooklyn could be the next to be dismantled.
The Randall’s Island shelter, given the precarious nature of the housing solution, has often been the subject of controversy and debate. Although its closure marks the end of a visible symbol of New York’s humanitarian crisis, the path to finding long-term solutions for thousands of migrants remains complex.
