NEW YORK (AP) — New York City on Tuesday closed the arrival center for migrants it had established at the Roosevelt Hotel, a once-grand Manhattan hotel that had become an emblem of the city’s fraught efforts to manage the flood of new migrants when it opened two years ago.
The midtown hotel, located blocks from Grand Central Terminal, served as the first stop for tens of thousands of immigrants arriving in the city seeking free shelter and services, with migrant families lining up and sometimes even sleeping on the street outside the hotel waiting for a bed.
Monday was the center’s last full day in operation, and the hotel was vacant as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Mayor Eric Adams’ office. Services provided at the Roosevelt, including registration, legal assistance and medical care, are now being offered to migrants at other shelter locations, the office said.
Among concerns about the hotel’s closure is that some people with disabilities are being transferred to locations that don’t adequately meet their needs, said David Giffen, head of the Coalition for the Homeless.
“Anytime the city is moving people between facilities it creates problems, and we’re seeing those problems,” Giffen said. “The ones that have the most needs are often the ones most forgotten.”
Besides serving as the city’s main migrant intake center, the Roosevelt also provided housing for migrant families with children.
A spokesperson for Adams didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The Democratic administration announced the city was winding down its operation at the Roosevelt and other migrant shelters in February as the surge of immigration from the U.S. southern border with Mexico waned.
The city is currently housing more than 37,000 migrants across 170 sites, down from a peak of nearly 70,000 last January, officials said Tuesday. During the height of the migrant wave, New York saw an average of 4,000 arrivals a week. That’s now down to less than 100 new migrants in the week that ended June 22, according to Adams’ office.
The number of new migrants has steadily dropped in large part to stricter immigration measures imposed during the end of former President Joe Biden’s administration as well as a broader immigration crackdown since President Donald Trump took office in January.
The Adams administration also placed limits on how long migrants could remain in shelters run by the city, which is legally obligated to provide temporary housing to anyone who asks.
More than 237,000 asylum-seekers have arrived in New York since April 2022, with more than 173,000 of them registered at the Roosevelt, city officials have said.
In recent months, the hotel became a prime target for the Trump administration, which claimed the Roosevelt was a hotbed for gang activity. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, citing those concerns, clawed back $80 million meant to reimburse the city for costs related to housing migrants.
The future of the storied hotel, which the city had leased from its longtime owners, Pakistan’s government-owned airline, remains unclear. Representatives for the property didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.
The Roosevelt opened in 1924 and has more than 1,000 rooms. In its heyday, the hotel was known for its in-house band, which was led by jazz great Guy Lombardo. It also served as New York Gov. Thomas Dewey’s election-night headquarters during his failed 1948 presidential campaign.
