NYC seriously considering housing migrants in troubled now-shuttered jail on Rikers Island

New York City officials are seriously considering a plan to house migrants in a Rikers Island jail that was shuttered last year, the Daily News has learned.

The move — which is among a number of drastic migrant housing options under consideration by Mayor Adams’ administration — sparked immediate pushback from advocates and city Democrats, who questioned how placing asylum seekers on Rikers jibes with a law requiring the city to permanently stop using the island as a jail by 2027.

“We’re working to adhere to the legal mandate to close the nightmare that is Rikers. The mayor has had a year to utilize city agencies to make a plan, and this is a troubling indication of an inadequate response,” said Manhattan Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s Criminal Justice Committee. “The cruelty is the point, and the crisis is failed leadership.”

The Rikers jail being considered for migrant housing is the Otis Bantum Correctional Center (OBCC), a 1,700-bed facility that was closed in June 2022, two city government sources and a Department of Correction insider told The News.

In recent months, the Department of Correction began a renovation project at the OBCC in hopes of using it to house detainees again.

But with the migrant crisis deepening, Adams administration officials have seriously explored the idea of putting asylum seekers at OBCC instead.

“They’re like, ‘If you’re kind of fixing this up anyway, this could be one of the facilities we look at for migrants,’” one of the city government sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The source stressed that a final decision has not been made.

But the administration has made clear “nothing is off the table and that they are looking at correctional facilities,” the person added.

Adams administration officials visited Rikers last week to check out empty facilities that could be turned into migrant housing, the second city government source said. The island currently has seven active jails.

During an unrelated press conference in Harlem on Wednesday morning, Adams did not deny that his administration could put migrants on Rikers, only saying he’s “looking at everything” when asked about The News’ report.

“I’m willing to make the tough decisions and not get bogged down in what the optics are,” the mayor told reporters.

Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, urged Adams to rethink the Rikers plan and argued vacant space in municipal buildings owned by agencies like the Department of Citywide Administrative Services would be better suited for migrant housing.

“Rikers Island has a long track record of causing nothing but pain, suffering and death to those that have been forced to reside there. It is a stain on our city,” Awawdeh said.

“Housing asylum seekers — who are pursuing their legal right to apply for asylum — on Rikers is simply immoral,” he said. “The traumatizing effect of doing so, after people have fled violence and persecution in their home countries, will cause more injury to families who are already struggling.”

Rivera said it’s alarming that the administration even talked about using jail facilities to house people who haven’t committed a crime.

“The physical facilities, they’re decrepit,” she added. “We’re looking to transition out of them for incarcerated people, and we would obviously want the same for anyone seeking asylum.”

Redmond Haskins, a spokesman for the Legal Aid Society, said Rikers as a whole is unfit to house migrants due to tight security protocols.

Nobody is allowed to walk on the island, and it usually takes weeks for civilians to secure permits granting access, Haskins noted.

“There is no freedom to leave the island for work or appointments. There is no way for [the Department of Correction] to apply a different set of rules to migrants and their service providers in this security structure,” said Haskins, whose public defender group represents many inmates on Rikers. “It just does not make sense even from the city’s point of view.”

The Otis Bantum Correctional Center had a series of troubles before closing. In a caught-on-video incident in August 2021, officers stood by as a 67-year-old detainee was severely beaten. And that fall, dozens of detainees were crammed into sordid intake areas for days on end without adequate sleeping arrangements or functioning bathrooms.

The Adams administration’s scramble to find more space comes as the city shelter and emergency hotel systems remain at capacity, housing more than 41,000 asylum seekers, with hundreds more arriving every day.

With no more space left in traditional shelters, Adams’ administration has in recent weeks opted to send migrants to live in upstate hotels and confirmed a plan to house some in public school gyms. The crisis is costing the city millions of dollars per day.

In addition to Rikers, Politico reported May 11 that the closed Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, N.Y. was also being eyed by the Adams administration as a site that could potentially be turned into migrant housing.