Nearly 100 rogue migrants booted from tent city outside Randall’s Island shelter site
Close to 100 rogue migrants were forced to tear down a mini-tent city illegally set up on the outskirts of the Randall’s Island shelter Friday after cops and city workers cracked down on the shabby encampment.
The migrant campers were ordered to dismantle the tents and pack up their belongings after the NYPD and city Parks Enforcement Patrol officers descended on the makeshift site mid-afternoon to boot them from the area.
“They were living here. Their time is up,” one city employee overseeing the clampdown told The Post. “They can’t stay here. We can’t have that.”
Several migrants could be seen folding up tents, removing laundry from nearby trees and stacking up their cooking pots, pans and utensils in shopping carts in the early afternoon.
City workers were later spotted hauling away troves of trash left behind — including large mattresses, scooters, folding chairs and a wooden table, as well as food containers, liquor bottles and empty Bud Light cans.
More than a dozen shopping carts, mostly from the nearby Costco, were also confiscated during the round-up.
One brazen man, though, took off running with his cart and managed to make off with it.
At least one tent was back up just a few hours after the sweep began, The Post observed.
The unsightly encampments have been popping up in the area for several months ever since migrants started being kicked out of the nearby 2,000-bed mega tent shelter when their city-mandated stay limit expired.
It wasn’t clear if any of the migrants booted on Friday had re-applied for a shot at another space in a city-run shelter.
But a Department of Homeless Services worker at the site said the majority of the people wrapped up in the latest crackdown didn’t want help getting into a new shelter.
“We have a list of 25 people who are going to shelters,” they said, adding, “Nobody else wanted to go.”
A Parks worker said: “They don’t want to re-apply. We tell them to leave but they keep coming back.”
The illegal mini-encampments have been a source of ongoing tension given Big Apple residents share use of the island’s park space and ballfields.
The Randall’s Island Park Alliance, which has publicly pushed back against City Hall erecting the shelter there, is set to hold a “Yoga in the Park” series nearby on Saturday.
The massive tent shelter, which is managed by the city Health + Hospital agency, has also been plagued by controversy after a spate of violent incidents — including one incident where a male migrant was stabbed to death in a dispute back in January.
— Additional reporting by Larry Celona
