City plans 2 shelters for asylum seekers in Brooklyn, Manhattan, as Red Hook facility closes

The city is closing one migrant relief center and opening two others Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday.

The Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center – or HERC – at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook will close at the end of March, just two months after it opened. The facility will transition back to normal operations ahead of the cruise season, “as always planned,” the mayor’s statement said.

Asylum seekers at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal location will be provided with bus transportation to the two new facilities in Bushwick, Brooklyn and Midtown, Manhattan. The massive shelter in Red Hook, which some migrants and advocates called “inhumane” had the capacity to hold 1,000 people. Together, the new sites, also congregate shelters, will serve 1,200 single adult men.

In his announcement Monday, the mayor again pleaded for help from the state and federal governments in dealing with the crisis.

“With more than 51,000 asylum seekers arriving here since last spring and over 31,000 asylum seekers currently in our care, New York City continues to call for a national strategy to handle this humanitarian crisis,” Adams said. “We continue to do more than any other city in the nation, but as the number of asylum seekers continues to grow, we are in serious need of support from both our state and federal governments.”

Two bills recently introduced by the City Council seek to ensure that large-scale shelters for asylum-seekers are subject to the same city right-to-shelter standards as traditional shelters.