Queens hotel will be NYC's 7th humanitarian relief center for asylum-seekers

The next migrant relief center will open at the Wingate by Wyndham hotel in Long Island City, Queens, Mayor Eric Adams said on Wednesday.

The facility will provide 144 rooms to families with children, offer them a range of services, and ensure they can reach their final destination if it is not New York City. The “Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center” would be the seventh one the city has opened since migrants began arriving last spring. The largest of these centers is located at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, which has been marred by issues.

Last week, the mayor announced another new HERC that will house nearly 500 adult families and single women at a Holiday Inn in the Financial District. The city is also utilizing 85 hotels across the five boroughs as emergency shelters for migrants.

According to City Hall, at least 45,000 migrants have arrived in the city since last spring, which the mayor said has been the main driver behind record-high homelessness at city shelters. In a press release on Tuesday, Adams once again pleaded with the federal government for help with the city's ongoing migrant crisis.

“As the number of asylum-seekers who have moved through our intake process in the last 10 months has now surpassed the total number of people who were in the city’s shelter system when I took office, it’s clear that New York City is in dire need of more support from our federal partners,” Adams said.

The mayor has spent months calling on the state and federal governments to provide more funding as the city struggles to handle the waves of migrants who have arrived from other states. Earlier this month, Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state would set aside $1.1 billion to help the city respond to the influx of migrants.

The city said the center would open soon, but did not give a specific date.