The Adams administration is moving forward with plans to impose curfews on a handful of migrant respite centers across the city after neighbors complained of the asylum-seekers panhandling, The Post has learned.
Migrants staying at the affected respite centers will be required to check in each night by 11 p.m. and remain inside until 6 a.m., mirroring standard curfews in place at homeless shelters across the city.
The directive marks Mayor Eric Adams’ first major step to address the complaints of neighbors who say they have been assailed by desperate asylum-seekers begging door to door for food and clothes.
The curfew will go into effect for the first time on Tuesday night, with residents being notified of the new rules on Monday, according to City Hall.
Only four respite centers — which hold migrants waiting for housing in longer-term shelters and tent cities — will be subject to the new curfew as of this week.
Those centers include two in Queens — the Judo Center on 35th Avenue and the JFK Center on North Boundary Road — as well as the Stockton Center on Stockton Street in Brooklyn, and the Lincoln Manhattan Center on Central Park North in Manhattan.
Exceptions to the curfew include requirements for work, school, and legal and medical appointments. Migrants must apply for permits allowing them to skip the curfew ahead of time, City Hall officials noted.
Anyone found violating curfew three times within 30 days will be subject to expulsion from the centers.
It remains unclear whether curfews will eventually be extended to migrant shelters and tent cities across the Big Apple, but City Hall has indicated it is a possibility in the future.
“New York City continues to lead the nation in managing this national humanitarian crisis, and that includes prioritizing the health and safety of both migrants in our care and longtime New Yorkers who live in the communities surrounding the emergency shelters we manage,” a City Hall spokesperson said in a statement.
The curfews were put in place in response to complaints from NYC residents living near migrant shelters and centers, who have been talking for weeks about an “invasion” of migrants knocking on their doors and begging for money at all hours of the day and night.
Most complaints have been centered around larger tent cities, or HERRCs (Humanitarian Emergency Response Relief Centers) like the Floyd Bennett Field shelter in the deep outskirts of Brooklyn, which is so remote that many migrants have found it easier to panhandle for money locally than traverse to the inner boroughs for work.
Residents near Floyd Bennett told The Post in December that scenes of desperate migrants in their neighborhood were “alarming,” and had left many residents “on edge.”
Other shelters, like the Randall’s Island tent city, have dealt with spates of crime, including drug dealing and even a fatal stabbing earlier in January.
Councilwoman Joann Ariola, who pressed the idea of curfews in response to her constituents’ concerns during a meeting with Adams officials last week, said the new rules were “only the first step” of many needed to solve the city’s migrant crisis.
“I’m certainly glad to see these curfews finally being put into place, but they should have been mandated from the beginning,” Ariola said.
“While I applaud the city for coming to its senses on the curfew issue, I believe this is only the first step. We still need to end our status as a right-to-shelter city, stop the flow of asylum-seekers into the five boroughs, and finally get rid of the tent cities and HERRCs that are draining our city’s coffers and gobbling up billions of taxpayer dollars,” she added.
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