New York City Mayor Eric Adams is moving his ‘tent city’ to Randalls Island as new photos show flooding in the original location at Orchard Beach in the Bronx, which was built just two weeks ago.Â
Late Monday evening, Adams announced that the complex, meant to give temporary housing to migrants, would move due to flooding concerns.Â
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson had previously said of tent site that it was ‘not the ideal location’ and was prone to flooding, according to the Daily News.Â
Adams also said Monday that the new location would provide better access to public transportation, another concern brought up by Gibson in September.Â
The move comes a day after DailyMail.com exclusively reported that democrats in El Paso are quietly bussing thousands of migrants to New York City.Â
This is the site where the new ‘tent city’ for migrants proposed by Mayor Eric Adams will be set up on Randalls IslandÂ
Birds were seen Tuesday submerged in the flooding water at the Orchard Beach parking lot where NYC Mayor Eric Adams planned to create a ‘tent city’ for migrants
Set up just days ago, crews were seen taking down the large tents in a parking lot near Orchard Beach
‘This new location is less prone to flooding, is closer to public transportation, and will provide temporary respite to 500 asylum seekers,’ Adams said in a statement.
‘Moving to Randalls Island will be more cost efficient than staying at Orchard Beach and installing the needed flood-mitigation measures to make the site fully viable,’ said mayoral representative Fabien Levy.Â
Over the weekend, the Orchard Beach location began flooding due to heavy rain.Â
Over the weekend, the Orchard Beach location began flooding due to heavy rain.
That location was slated to accommodate as many as 1,000 migrants at a time. Â
The tents will now move nearly 12 miles closer to Manhattan.Â
Randalls Island is located between Manhattan, Astoria, and the Bronx and is mostly home to a sewage treatment plant and recreational fields.Â
It’s a quick turnaround as workers were seen on Monday continuing to set up the tents in the rain.Â
NYC Mayor Eric Adams recently announced the planned tent accommodations, which are expected to take two weeks to complete, as a way for the city manage needing to provide some sort of shelter to the large number of migrants being bused north by Republicans
The new location will be a scaled down version of the original plan for Orchard Beach, according to officials familiar with the site.Â
‘This has the ability to scale if needed, but we’re going to start out with 500,’ Levy told the Daily News.Â
Previous estimates placed the bigger Orchard Beach site’s cost at around $150 million, but no word has been provided on how that total will change due to the move.
3,000 new migrants have arrived in the last week, according to the mayor’s office. Â
The total now stands at just over 16,000.Â
Democratic Councilwoman for Randalls Island, Diana Ayala, told the Daily News that she has concerns about this location, as well.Â
‘I’d like to go out to see the area prior to taking a position, but I do have concerns,’ said Ayala, noting that there could be flooding in this location, too.Â
An aerial photo taken with a drone shows workers assemble emergency tents to house some of the many migrants arriving to the city in the parking lot of Orchard Beach, with the skyline of Manhattan in the background
New York City shelters are currently at capacity leaving little room for the migrant community that continues to arrive in the city weekly
‘This is not an everyday homelessness crisis, but a humanitarian crisis that requires a different approach,’ Mayor Adams said in a statement a few weeks ago.   Â
Once completed, officials say the tents will be heated and cots will be lined up in rows.
Even before the building began, however, immigration advocates have said the plan was not well thought out.
‘While we recognize there is urgency in meeting the very real needs of asylum seeking families while our shelter system remains over-burdened, we believe that any effort to open a temporary relief camp at Orchard Beach is ridiculous and likely to cause more harm than good, especially as the fall turns into winter,’ said Murad Awawdeh, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition.
‘We fear that what was meant to be a temporary solution will become an inadequate permanent one,’ Awawdeh said.
Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, was criticized by members of both his own party and those on the other side of the aisle for his migrant tent proposal
 Groups advocating for the homeless said they were reserving judgment. Â
In early September, Adams also mentioned possibly housing migrants on cruise ships temporarily.
That idea was also attacked quickly.Â
Overwhelmingly, critics say that Adams’ ideas seem to be short-sighted.Â
The Randalls Island location is just one of two proposed sites to house 13,00 migrants in New York City. The second location has yet to be determined.Â
In a press release sent out in September, Adams said his plan serves as proof of his ‘moral duty’ to the Venezuelan migrants arriving in New York City every week.
‘Now, more than ever, it’s clear that we are again dealing with a humanitarian crisis created by human hands,’ Adams said at the time.Â
Migrants arriving in New York City earlier this month. Republican Mayors are warning Democratic counterparts they’ll keep sending bus loads of people until they denounce Biden’s border policy
Pictured: A bus carrying migrants arrived in New York City on Sunday, Sep, 4
Along with the complaint about how the move will play out over time, homeless advocates are also upset over the mayor’s decision to seemingly put migrants ahead of New York residents in need of a place to live.Â
Overall, the number of people staying nightly in New York City’s homeless shelters had fallen in recent years, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
That led city officials to reduce shelter capacity, leaving the system unprepared for the sudden surge in people needing help.
On Monday, the Daily Mail Online exclusively reported that the mayor of El Paso, Texas, was working with the White House to bus migrants from the border city to major cities, New York included.Â
DailyMail.com visited El Paso to see the immigration crisis first hand. The helps more than 500 migrants every day board buses to New York and Chicago and assists with travel plans elsewhere across the U.S. Â
The city moved its migrant problem to a processing facility on the edge of town. DailyMail.com witnesses lines of immigrants – mostly young men, but also many families – waiting to board buses for the next stage of their journeyÂ
Migrants await their free bus rides north at El Paso’s ‘welcome center’. Many of the new arrivals have fled flawed leftist regimes in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua
Downtown El Paso has in recent weeks witnessed chaotic scenes of migrants sleeping on the streets, after the surge of new arrivals overwhelmed the area’s federal-run processing facilities
DailyMail.com visited the border to see the migrant surge first hand. We witnessed a steady flow of people crossing the Rio Grande river by foot, handing themselves into border guards, being processed and then sent on buses northwards by local officials.
‘The hypocrisy on display right now by Democrats and coastal elites is a thing to behold,’ said R.J. Hauman, an analyst at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a policy group.
‘Transporting illegal aliens into American communities is either perfectly fine or inhumane. It just depends who sends them and where they go.’
El Paso city spends $250,000-$300,000 daily on feeding and arranging travel for migrants and lodging them in hotels or shelters, and last month opened a transit center in an industrial zone on the city’s northeastern desert edge.
There, migrants with means can book their own flights or buses for onward travel. Cash-strapped newcomers get free rides aboard charters. More than 5,000 arrivals have been sent north aboard more than 115 such buses since August 23.
El Paso’s buses, officials say, operate in coordination with officials in New York and Chicago – who get advance notice of arrivals and the names of the migrant passengers aboard.
