NYC shrinks migrant shelter systems as border surge slows and Trump threatens mass deportations

New York City is shrinking the huge emergency shelter system it created to house tens of thousands of migrants as the number of new arrivals steadily drops and President-elect Donald Trump has promised mass deportations upon regaining the White House next month.

In its latest move, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday that a huge tent shelter housing more than 1,800 migrants on a remote, former airport in Brooklyn will close Jan. 15, with residents transferred to other sites.

The Democrat said the shelter joins 25 locations recently shuttered or earmarked for closure, including another huge tent complex on an island park off Manhattan that the mayor previously announced will close in February.

Since the November election, migrants and their advocates have focused their efforts on urging the Democratic administration to close the Floyd Bennett Field shelter and relocate families living there out of concern they would be prime targets for Trump’s mass deportation plan, given the site's on federal land.

Mariama Barry, a 26-year-old from Guinea, has been living the past year at the airfield. The single mother of two young children said she and other shelter residents feared what might happen when Trump takes office.

She said returning to her West African homeland simply isn’t an option because she fled to escape a forced marriage and to prevent her young daughter from being subjected to genital mutilation.

“I thought we were going to be safe here,” Barry said, speaking outside the shelter’s security gate last week. “Now (Trump) is here again talking about deportation, taking people back to where we’ve been running from, so we’re concerned, we’re worried.”

Advocates similarly applauded the announcement. But said they’ll closely monitor the next steps to ensure migrants are protected from any potential federal immigration enforcement actions and that any disruptions to school, work, health care and other critical services are minimized.

“Floyd Bennett Field - a semi-congregate facility where families with children live in tents on an unused airfield mired in a flood zone, miles from schools, and other services - was always the wrong location to shelter vulnerable families with young children,” the Legal Aid Society and Coalition for the Homeless said in a joint statement.

The pending closure of the airfield and other sites is the latest step the Democratic administration has taken to wind down New York City’s response to an influx of roughly 250,000 migrants to the city since the spring of 2022.

At least 11 other shelters providing roughly 1,800 beds closed in November, including one in an isolated warehouse at John F. Kennedy Airport and another in a 19-story, former college dormitory on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

The administration has also committed to closing all 10 shelters the city operates in five upstate counties by month's end.

But for weeks Adams has declined to elaborate on the future of Floyd Bennett Field. His announcement Tuesday also didn't cite any concerns about the incoming Trump administration, which takes office Jan. 20 — five days after the last of the migrants are expected to move out of the airfield, which is a federal historic site, as it had been the city's first airport and later a naval station.

Instead, the mayor chalked up the decision, along with other recent shelter closures, to his administration’s sometimes controversial immigration policies, such as imposing limits for how long migrants can remain under the city's care.

“Thanks to our smart management strategies, we’ve turned the corner, and this additional slate of shelter closures we’re announcing today is even more proof that we’re managing this crisis better than any other city in the nation,” he said Tuesday, adding the work would continue to find more sites to consolidate and close and "save taxpayer money.”

Trump’s transition team didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday. Still, it said in a statement to The Associated Press last week that the Republican will “marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history.”

New York, like other major U.S. cities, has seen new migrant arrivals steadily decline since the summer.

The city’s shelter system currently provides housing to roughly 55,000 migrants across roughly 200 temporary sites, down from a peak of nearly 70,000 migrants in January, the administration says.

More than 500 new migrants entered the city system in the week ending Dec. 1, down from a peak of 3,450 the week ending Jan. 7, according to city data.

Other cities have similarly wound down migrant shelter operations as arrivals have waned in part because of new asylum restrictions imposed by President Joe Biden in June.

Denver closed its last short-term housing location in October after housing as many as 5,000 migrants across ten facilities in January. Chicago is currently housing roughly 2,700 migrants in 7 remaining sites, down from 15,000 migrants living in 28 temporary shelters last December.