Mayor Adams Says City Doesn't Have Tents Despite Randall's Island Migrant Encampment

Photo by‪Salah DarwishonUnsplash

New York City has implemented a rule that restricts shelter stays for adult migrants to a single 30-day placement. Extensions may be allowed only for “extenuating circumstances.” As a result, many of the city's migrants who have been subjected to that rule are camping out on the banks of Randall's Island. They are cooking over open fires and some are even bathing in the East River.

23-year-old Guillermo Contreras from Colombia told The City, in Spanish, "We’re here, awaiting what comes, because where are we going to run to,” he said. “We don’t have anywhere else to go.”

The people living in the riverbank encampment talked about utilizing a makeshift water fountain for bathing and drinking, using the public bathrooms at one end of the park, and sharing the few resources they have to cook meals together on fallen branches that they had foraged from the neighboring woods. Those without tents spend the night on cardboard, camping mats, or inflatable air mattresses.

Despite the growing settlement, New York City Mayor Eric Adams stated, “you don’t see encampments” in the city.

On the MSNBC Morning Joe show, Mayor Adams stated, "When you look at the fact that… do an analysis of other cities, you don't see the encampments, you don't see the tents, you don't see that."

Most of the migrants are eligible for extensions once their 30-day stay expires. But homeless advocates say many are getting lost in the application process. Josh Goldfein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, stated, “They reached the end of the eligibility process without understanding what was required of them. Whether, because they didn’t have any case work, they had never had any contact with the case manager, they have a literacy issue, or a disability or even they just couldn’t communicate in their preferred language,” Goldfein said. “The frustrating part is trying to figure out how this group of people are slipping through the cracks.”

The Adams' administration is not in favor of the migrants setting up encampments outside the shelters.

“That’s not OK,” Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said, when questioned about the encampments. “We’re not trying to be heavy handed, but if you’ve had your time, you’ve had your case management, and you have to leave, you have to really move on.”