Roosevelt Hotel Shelter, Symbol of NYC Migrant Crisis, Will Close

The Roosevelt Hotel, a century-old building in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, became the improbable symbol of New York City’s migrant crisis, nicknamed “the new Ellis Island” for its role as an arrival center for migrants seeking shelter in the city.

Images of immigrants languishing on the surrounding sidewalks as they waited for beds two summers ago emerged as a cultural and political flashpoint.

But in a sign of how the crisis has subsided, the hotel will cease operating as a shelter by June, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday. The decision was a watershed moment as the number of migrants arriving in the city continues to slow and officials dismantle the emergency shelter system they established nearly three years ago.

The storied hotel, which closed to guests in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic but got a second life as a migrant shelter, drew national attention at the height of the crisis. As thousands of migrants cycled through its faded lobby, the Roosevelt turned into a lightning rod in the country’s immigration debate: both as a reminder of the depth of the crisis and as shorthand for critics opposed to the expenditure of taxpayer money on migrants.

Monday’s announcement was yet another example of how a monthslong decline in crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border — during the end of the Biden administration and now under President Trump — has markedly eased the financial and political strain of the influx on cities. Chicago closed its last shelter that exclusively housed migrants in December, as did Denver.

The Roosevelt shelter, which still houses 2,852 migrants, is one of more than 50 that New York has closed or announced it will shutter as the number of new arrivals has decreased. The city also recently closed two sprawling tent shelters on Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and on Randall’s Island.

The welcome center in the lobby of the Roosevelt where migrants received shelter assignments will close, and so will the hundreds of rooms housing families upstairs, the mayor said. It was not immediately clear whether the hotel would reopen to tourists.

The closures have coincided with President Trump’s immigration crackdown, which has raised the prospect among immigration activists, lawyers and city officials that migrant shelters could be easily targeted by federal immigration authorities.

The announcement of the Roosevelt’s closure came shortly after the Trump administration cited the hotel in its decision to abruptly claw back about $80 million in federal funds the city had received to subsidize some of its shelter operations. The city sued the federal government on Friday, calling the clawback a “money grab” and disputing the Trump administration’s characterization of the Roosevelt as the headquarters of a Venezuelan gang.

The average number of migrants arriving in the city each week is now about 350, down from a weekly high of 4,000 at the peak of the crisis. Nearly 45,000 migrants still live in converted hotels, offices and warehouses across the city, down from a high of 69,000 in January 2024.

The mayor described the closure of the Roosevelt as a milestone. The hotel was the first stop for more than 173,000 migrants seeking shelter in the city since May 2023.

“The fact that, within a span of a year, we are closing 53 sites and shuttering all of our tent-based facilities shows both our continued progress and our ability, when faced with unprecedented challenges, to do what no other city can,” Mr. Adams said.

The city says it has spent more than $7 billion to house, feed and provide services to migrants since early 2022. Migrant families staying at the Roosevelt will be relocated to other shelters, but it was unclear if the city would open a new intake center.

The owner of the hotel, Pakistan International Airlines, which bought the Roosevelt in 2000, did not reply to requests for comment. The airline, which is owned by the Pakistani government, closed the hotel indefinitely in December 2020 after the pandemic decimated the tourism industry.

As the influx of migrants overwhelmed the existing shelter system, the city struck a $220 million, three-year deal to convert the hotel into a shelter, according to a person briefed on the deal. The city agreed to pay a nightly rate of $202 per room in the hotel, which has more than 1,000 rooms, according to a copy of the contract. It was one of more than 100 shelter contracts the city entered into with hotels across the city, from large hotels in Times Square to budget spots in Queens and Brooklyn.

Vijay Dandapani, the leader of the Hotel Association of New York City, a trade group, said he was unaware of Pakistan’s plans for the hotel, but that it was possible it could “be acquired by a large real estate firm to redevelop as a mixed-use tower.”

“We are not sure if it will return as a hotel as the hotel market remains challenging,” said Mr. Dandapani, whose group manages a city contract of up to $1.04 billion for hotels converted into shelters.

The Roosevelt, an 18-floor building on East 45th Street near Grand Central Terminal, opened in 1924 and was named after former President Theodore Roosevelt. Guy Lombardo was a mainstay during the first half of the 20th century, leading the house band in the hotel’s grill. And its rooms became popular office space for the Republican Party, housing the campaigns of Fiorello La Guardia when he ran for mayor, and those of Thomas E. Dewey and Dwight D. Eisenhower when they ran for president.

In 2023, city officials turned the Roosevelt’s lobby into the main intake center for migrants seeking beds in the city. The once-grand lobby, chandelier and all, was transformed into a temporary command center for city contractors responsible for interviewing migrants and conducting health screenings.

On Monday, Mariela Narvaez, a mother of two from Venezuela staying at the hotel, said that, given the heated rhetoric about migrants, she was not surprised the city was closing the shelter.

“Many of us have spent enough time for us to be able to get our bearings,” she said in Spanish. “What this really is, if I’m being honest, is living from the government, and that is not what I wanted to do.”

What concerns her more, she said, is the Trump administration, which has already moved to end temporary protected status for Venezuelans.

“The fear is not that they shut down the shelter; it’s what happens when immigration stops you outside the shelter, when they ask you for your papers.”

The scene at the hotel Monday was starkly different than a year and a half ago, when hundreds of migrant men slept on the sidewalks outside the Roosevelt after the mayor announced the city had run out of shelter beds. The city found more shelter space within a few days, but the images crystallized the city’s sometimes-chaotic response and the Biden administration’s lax border policies.

Later on, the Roosevelt and other hotels-turned-shelters in Midtown became associated with a string of snatch-and-grab robberies, mostly in Times Square, that the police attributed to a small number of recent migrants, some of whom lived in shelters. The police have said that some of them, including young boys, live in the Roosevelt and belong to an offshoot of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that Mr. Trump has railed against.

The Roosevelt also became a frequent target for conservatives upset about the use of government resources to provide free shelter to migrants at the expense of American taxpayers. In December, Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, criticized the city’s deal with Pakistan’s government, saying that “NYC taxpayers are effectively paying a foreign government to house illegals in our own country.”

In a joint statement, the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless said that the Roosevelt closure could reduce the shelter system’s bed capacity, making it harder for the city to meet its right-to-shelter mandate, which requires the city to provide a bed to anyone who is homeless.

“We are very concerned that the city will not be able to meet its moral and legal obligations to provide safe and appropriate shelter for all in need,” the statement said.

On Monday afternoon, as migrant children trickled out of school buses and into the hotel, two men from Senegal approached a security guard, telling him they had nowhere to sleep.

“No shelter?” the security guard replied. “OK, come in here and someone will help you.”

Wesley Parnell contributed reporting.