Three New York City resource centers that help migrants apply for asylum, work permits and other immigration programs will close next month, according to an announcement from the Adams administration on Friday.
The closures come as the number of new arrivals continues to decline amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration, after they started dropping off when former President Joe Biden restricted border crossings. But the city is still caring for 38,000 migrants in its shelter system, according a City Hall spokesperson.
City officials blamed the closure of the facilities — one based at the Red Cross headquarters on the West Side, another in Times Square, and a third at a migrant shelter in the Bronx — on the lack of continued state funding for migrant services. Gov. Kathy Hochul has committed more than $4 billion to the city in recent years, but she recently denied Mayor Eric Adams’s request for another $1 billion.
“Unfortunately, the state recently decided not to allocate any new funding to New York City for asylum-seeker-related costs,” said Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for Adams. “We are disappointed to have to make the difficult decision to close a resource center that has allowed us to provide assistance on over 109,000 applications.”
According to city officials, around 236,000 migrants have arrived in the city since the spring of 2022, when a sharp increase in arrivals reached a crisis point that strained city services.
The scale of the crisis, which the city estimates has cost nearly $8 billion, has significantly abated over the last year. When crossings at the United States-Mexico border were at their peak, officials cited a weekly average of 4,000 new arrivals in the city. That dropped to 600 after Biden issued an executive order last year to close the border.
City officials reported around 100 new arrivals last week.
Hochul’s office pointed to the dwindling numbers in response to the Adams administration’s announcement.
“The number of weekly migrant arrivals has declined by 95% and the City has more than $2 billion from the State that they have yet to draw from, which is why this year’s budget did not include additional funding,” said Avi Small, a spokesperson for Hochul. “The governor will continue partnering with City Hall to address their responsibility to provide shelter to new arrivals.”
