Thousands of migrants still living at NYC's historic Roosevelt Hotel — despite ticking clock for shelter to close

Yahoo

08-05-2025

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When does it end?
Nearly 2,000 migrants are still being housed in the historic Roosevelt Hotel — despite the city insisting the makeshift shelter will be shuttering next month.
The 100-year-old landmark in Midtown became a symbol of the Big Apple's migrant crisis as it became the intake center for the more than 230,000 asylum seekers from the US border who flocked to the five boroughs since 2022.
As many as 2,900 people were also housed there on taxpayer dime at the peak of the crisis, and the number of residents has only dwindled to around 1,800 as of Wednesday.
Built in 1924, the once luxurious Roosevelt Hotel has been a migrant shelter since 2022, and still houses nearly 2,000. Robert Miller
That's even as Mayor Eric Adams has all but declared the migrant crisis over in February, when he announced the hotel's impeding closure.
Sources said at the time the hotel-turned-shelter would be empty by June.
But City Hall continues to be vague on just when the Roosevelt will be shut down as a shelter — saying on Wednesday only that the transition should happen sometime in June.
People being housed at the hotel told The Post they have been offered help to get out of the state, but haven't been given a date by which they have to pack up and leave, causing confusion and anguish.
'It's in God's hands,' Sandra, a 34-year-old Venezuelan migrant, said Wednesday. 'I don't know what will happen to me next. My hope is that I can find a job and not rely on anyone for housing and work.'
Juan Gabriel, 22, also from Venezuela, said he's unsure when or where he'll have to move.
'They offered to send us to other states, one was somewhere near the border with Canada, but I don't want to go,' he said. 'I don't think I'll be able to find work there.'
The hotel at 45 East 45th Street is one of 171 sites still used as shelters for the asylum seekers, whose numbers are dwindling as President Trump's immigration policies slow the flow of migrants into the country.
The dip in new arrivals has prompted the Adams administration to close the massive tent encampments at Randall's Island and Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field, and announce a string of other shelter closures. A City Hall spokesperson said Wednesday the administration had already closed 59 shelters.
During the week ending on May 4, the Big Apple saw just over 100 new arrivals, City Hall officials said, down radically from the height of nearly 4,000 migrants per week who poured into the city during January 2024.
New York post front page after Mayor Eric Adams vowed to shut down the Roosevelt Hotel as a migrant shelter. New York Post
Migrants wait in line outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan to check in with the city earlier this year. Michael Nagle
'Despite our success in helping over 195,000 migrants leave the city's care and take their next steps toward self-sufficiency, we still have over 39,000 migrants in our care, and any implication that we are now out of the woods is simply false,' City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia said in a statement. 'And as we previously stated, the Roosevelt — and two other migrant shelters — will be closing next month.'
The conversion of the historic hotel stood as a symbol of the strain of the migrant crisis.
Built in 1924, the Roosevelt, named after President Teddy Roosevelt, was once the peak of Big Apple luxury.
It was the site of the first broadcast of 'Auld Lang Syne' by Guy Lombardo and his Orchestra and housed the presidential campaign headquarters of former Gov. Thomas Dewey during the 1948 race, remembered for the Chicago Tribune's front-page 'Dewey Defeats Truman' gaffe.
When a massive wave of migrants began to stream across the southern US border in the spring 2022, the clientele at the Roosevelt took on a different look as the processing center for newcomers to the sanctuary city and housing nearly 3,000 in rooms once reserved for VIPs.
It also became a hotbed of criminal activity, with the Venezuela street gang Tren de Aragua recruiting at the hotel and orchestrating moped robbery crews from within its walls, police sources have said.
A 10-year-old migrant boy uses a laptop after a school pickup outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. Michael Nagle
Most recently, a 12-year-old pintsized gangbanger accused of being the ringleader of a Central Park robbery crew and part of a mob that swarmed two NYPD cops in Times Square over the weekend was listed as a resident.
But problems with some of the Roosevelt's shelter residents predated the baby-faced troublemaker.
In September 2023, two separate assaults sent cops to the hotel, with one migrant charged with strangling his girlfriend and another stabbed by his partner during a scuffle.
Three migrants living at the hotel were charged in a $5,300 shoplifting spree in February 2024, as were some of the mob who ganged up on two cops in Times Square in January 2024.
The newfound rep of the Roosevelt Hotel got so bad that most of the migrants living there griped about the gangbangers and criminal in their midst.
Migrant parents wait for their children to be dropped off from school outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. Michael Nagle
'The reputation of this hotel is all over TikTok,' Ecuadorean native Fernanda Rosa said in October. 'We all know what the hotel is known for.'
Ana, a mother of three from Venezuela, said the clock was ticking for the Roosevelt shelter.
'The shelter isn't perfect, but I've been grateful to have a place to live,' she told The Post outside the hotel Wednesday.
'I don't really know what happens next.'