Migrants trashed Randall’s Island while sheltered at a massive tent city at the once-bucolic Big Apple park — and now one Manhattan pol wants $11 million to spruce it back up for city kids.
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine is asking City Hall to invest $5.8 million to restore the synthetic fields at the site that were shredded by the 3,000-bed migrant shelter before it was shut down — and another $5.2 million for new lighting that would add 6,000 more hours of youth recreation.
“These fields, located at the base of the 103rd Street Footbridge, are critical for the recreational needs of New Yorkers citywide, but and in particular East Harlem and South Bronx residents,” Levine wrote in a letter to Mayor Eric Adams and city parks officials on Feb. 27.
“While we understand and fully appreciate the necessity of the temporary measures taken, we must also address the impact they have had on the park’s infrastructure and the community’s access to quality recreational facilities,” Levine wrote. “These additional playable hours would provide over 200,000 kids with the opportunity to get outside and play each year.”
The massive migrant tent city was erected in August 2023 as the city grappled with an unprecedented influx of asylum seekers from the US border with Mexico.
But the facility was plagued with problems from the start, including bouts of violence among the occupants and a disheveled encampment set up by migrants booted from the shelter.
The Randall’s Island shelter was officially shut down last month, and city workers have been working for several weeks to clean up the mess left behind — including debris tossed into the water by migrants at the encampment, with everything from chairs to clothing to Citi Bikes dumped along the shoreline.
“We came in with the garbage trucks and the police,” one parks department worker told The Post. “There were a couple of arrests. One of the migrants threw a rock at my supervisor, hit him in the foot and he had to press charges. The rest that were running, they had warrants.
“We’ve been at this every day the past two weeks,” the worker said. “It’s a lot of garbage that we had to get out. You can see it’s getting back. It’s going to be beautiful here. It was beautiful.”
In February 2024, several migrants were booted from the tents after a wild caught-on-video brawl that forced NYPD cops to scuffle with the thugs to regain control.
Five months later, a Venezuelan migrant was killed and others wounded in a drive-by shooting outside the facility, apparent retaliation for an earlier outburst of violence there.
In August, cops played a cat-and-mouse game with migrants at the illicit encampment where drugs and booze were sold out in the open, tearing it down only to have them erect their tents again overnight.
Locals are now breathing a sigh of relief that the tents are finally gone.
“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” said Olga, a 54-year-old Bronx resident who was out on a lunchtime walk with her coworkers from the nearby Kirby Psychiatric Center. “It was too much violence. It was out of control. Garbage everywhere. I didn’t feel safe walking around here during lunchtime.”
Meanwhile, a security guard who worked the migrant shelter said he only has one regret.
“The only reason I’m sorry to see it go is because it was job security,” he said. “Other than that, c’mon, this is so much better. It’s going back to the nice place it was.”
In a statement Wednesday, a spokesperson for Adams said the mayor would respond to Levine’s letter but did not provide specifics — although the rep did herald the administration’s handling of the migrant mess.
“Thanks to the Adams administration’s smart management of the migrant crisis — including our 30- and 60-day policies and advocacy at the federal level — we have seen over seven straight months of population declines in our shelter system,” the statement said.
The spokesperson said there are no migrants left at Randall’s Island and that 53 shelters will be shuttered by June, including all emergency shelters, which they said saved taxpayers $5 billion.
City officials have opened 258 migrant shelters since the influx began in 2022.