The city opened a migrant relief center on Randall’s Island on Sunday, nearly a week after opening a relief center outside a psychiatric center in Queens.
The new state-funded site will house around 3,000 single men who are seeking asylum, Dr. Ted Long, the senior vice president of ambulatory care and population health at New York City Health + Hospitals, said at a news briefing.
Randall’s Island had previously been selected to house a migrant center last October, but that center soon shuttered amid a lull in arrivals and concerns about cold weather and the potential for flooding.
The new facility opened at a time when the city has been calling for more help from the state and the federal government.
“Again, while New York City might be a city of immigrants, we are not a city of unlimited resources,” Manuel Castro, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, said at the news briefing Sunday.
“So we again call on the federal government and on the state government to provide the appropriate support that New York City needs to be able to deal with this humanitarian crisis,” Castro added.
Long said the new site will be different from the site set up on the island last year, but added that the city plans on “keeping the things that worked well there,” including easy access to transportation to ensure migrants can travel to different parts of the city.
More than 100,000 migrants have arrived in the five boroughs since last spring, Castro said.
Officials estimate the city is currently serving more than 58,000 migrants.
Another migrant relief center serving around 1,000 adult men seeking asylum opened outside the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens last week.