Adams’ plush NYC tent city finally welcomes migrants as 100-plus Senegalese move in
He built it — so they came!
Mayor Eric Adams’ nearly empty migrant tent city on Randall’s Island is finally getting filled up — thanks to over 100 Senegalese men who moved in with the help of a Bronx imam who found out about the vacancies there, The Post has learned.
The migrants — most of whom made their way across the southern border — were bused Sunday to the 500-bed facility, which has stood mostly unused for weeks after opening last month.
And when the first 113 Senegalese men to arrive Sunday discovered how nice it is — with everything from three meals a day and laundry service to a lounge with couches, flat-screen TV and Xbox video games — they told their friends and even more men poured in.
“It’s good conditions. We can’t complain,” Serigne Ndiaye, 34, from Dakar, Senegal, told The Post.
“My friends heard about the tents from an imam who has been looking after them. My friend sent me a message and told me to come here.”
As of late last month, there were as few as seven men in the facility, which cost $325,000 to build, in addition to another $325,000 spent on construction at another site that was abandoned due to flooding.
One migrant told The Post there were about 200 men living there, from both Senegal and Central and South America.
“We can stay as long as we want,” Ndiaye said.
The arrival of the Senegalese migrants was organized by Imam Omar Niass of the Masjid Ansaru-Deen Islamic house of worship in The Bronx, who said that he was housing an influx of Senegalese migrants on his own before hearing of the empty facility.
“All the men came across the southern border,” he said.
“Some of them took the Greyhound bus to New York. The [Roman Catholic] church helps buy a ticket for them. A non-profit organization also buys a lot of bus tickets for the migrants.”
Niass added: “Sometimes, the church gives them plane tickets to JFK [Airport] and I have to go and pick them up.”
Niass said the migrants were working in Brazil when “they heard the border was open and they left their jobs…and came to America.”
“Any time I ask them, all they are talking about is, ‘Border is open,’ ‘Border is open,'” he said.
Niass credited Pastor Gilford Monrose, executive director of Adams’ Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships, with arranging to take the men off his hands.
It’s unclear whether all the migrants entered the US after being processed by immigration officials and were released to seek asylum legally.
But Niass said he’s been notified by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement that migrants gave authorities his address and were on their way.
“They want to apply for asylum but I don’t know about that,” Niass said.
The tent city, which opened on Oct. 19, stood largely vacant for weeks because the US and Mexico struck a deal under which Venezuelans who crossed the border would be sent back — leading the Democratic mayor of El Paso, Texas, to finally stop sending busloads of migrants to New York City.
On Tuesday, The Post saw four migrants who appeared to be Africans walk up and get admitted into the tent city, which has generated controversy due to its cushy amenities.
“They are getting food, clothes, medical evaluations, MetroCards and allowed to play pool, pingpong, PlayStation and Xbox,” a source familiar with the situation said.
“They heard about all the benefits and decided to get on the gravy train.
One migrant — Dembes Ba, 26, of Senegal — said he’d been in the US for about three months, adding, “I came to America because it’s the place of freedom.”
Ba said he spent about a month with a friend in Kansas City, Mo., but left “because it was too hard to live there without a car.”
“I have been staying with a friend in New York but he has a wife, so I can’t stay there,” he added.
Ndiaye, meanwhile, said he flew to the US about a month ago to seek asylum and had been staying in a homeless shelter in The Bronx.
“When I came here, they said I could stay if I didn’t have a place to live.”
Ndiaye, who was heading to a Salvation Army store in Manhattan, said some of his fellow migrants were seeking off-the-books work as dishwashers and delivery workers.
“I want to work, but I want to do it legally. It’s hard without documents,” he said.
“I really want to live in New York City.”
A City Hall spokesperson declined to confirm how many people were living in the tent city or their countries of origin.
But the spokesperson said officials believed that most of the city’s migrants came from Venezuela with some having come from other countries, including in Africa.
The spokesperson also said the tent city, which the city calls a “humanitarian emergency response and relief center,” was restricted to “recently arrived seekers to be connected with services and to receive support getting to their final desired destination.”
As of Sunday, the official estimate of the city’s migrant population was more than 22,300, with in excess of 16,600 in the shelter system or the tent city.
