Construction has officially begun on the Randall’s Island Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center anticipated to house some 2,000 migrants.
Tucked away at the southern end of the island, workers literally started laying the foundation on Tuesday of what will become the second tent city the island has seen since 2022—although the first one was taken down when the migrant influx subsided temporarily last year.
The relief center is going up on a soccer field that is expected to render several of the greenspaces unusable to the public once the facility is fully up and running.
According to the mayor’s press secretary Fabien Levy, there is no definitive date as to when the center will be in operation, only that it is projected to house new arrivals in the “coming weeks.”
