New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that the city will close the Asylum Seeker Arrival Center at the Roosevelt Hotel, a site that was the frequent target of criticism from Elon Musk and the Tump administration.
Over 173,000 migrants completed registrations at the Manhattan hotel since its opening in May 2023, accounting for nearly three quarters of the 232,000 migrants who entered the city since the spring of 2022, the Adams administration reported.
“While we’re not done caring for those who come into our care, today marks another milestone in demonstrating the immense progress we have achieved in turning the corner on an unprecedented international humanitarian effort,” Adams said in a Monday statement.
The mayor added that his administration has “skillfully managed this crisis,” and that the Roosevelt Hotel has been “key in allowing us to effectively manage our operations.”
On top of closing the arrival center at the hotel, Adams also announced the closure of the Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center located at Roosevelt.
The mayor cited a downtick of migrant registrations as well as the success of migrants who have “sought care” from the city to take their “next steps in their journeys,” as inspiring the move to shut down the core center at Roosevelt Hotel.
Adams’ administration said that while an average 4,000 migrants were arriving each week to New York City during the “height of the international asylum seeker crisis,” the average number of registrants in the city has dropped down to the about 350 migrants per week in recent months.
“Now, thanks to the sound policy decisions of our team, we are able to announce the closure of this site and help even more asylum seekers take the next steps in their journeys as they envision an even brighter future, while simultaneously saving taxpayers millions of dollars,” Adams said in a statement.
Adams touted that the hotel’s closure adds to the plans to close 53 other emergency shelters sites across the city by June. The administration cited less than 45,000 migrants currently being in the city’s care, dropping from a high of 69,000 last month.
The mayor’s announcement comes just days after the city filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Friday, seeking to reclaim $80 million that was previously authorized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to cover hotel costs for migrants.
The City of New York claims in the lawsuit that the Trump administration “reached into a central bank account of the City of New York (the “City”) and grabbed” the money, according to court documents.
“It took these funds from the City without any advance notice that it would be doing so and without communicating any decision or rationale to the City,” the lawsuit said.
The $80 million included both a $59 million grant plus an award of $21.5 million for the city’s costs to maintain its asylum seeker system that were awarded during former president Joe Biden’s term, but were not disbursed until this month, according to the lawsuit.
Elon Musk, the billionaire advisor to Trump who operate the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said in a post on X earlier this month that the funds “violated the law.”
“The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants,” Musk said in the post on Feb. 10. “Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.”
Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, who was also named on the city’s lawsuit, said on Feb. 12 that she had “clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels.”
Noem claimed that Roosevelt Hotel served as a “base of operations” for Tren de Aragua and was “used to house Laken Riley’s killer.”
“Mark my words: there will not be a single penny spent that goes against the interest and safety of the American people,” Noem said in the post on X.
The clash between Adams and the Trump administration comes after Adams has repeated his support for Trump border czar Tom Homan’s objectives since meeting with Homan in December.
Homan met with Adams again on Feb. 14, saying in a “Fox and Friends” interview later that day that he would make sure Adams followed through on his promises.
“If he doesn’t come through,” Homan said in the interview, “I’ll be back in New York City and we won’t be sitting on the couch. I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’”
