On any given night, some 3,000 migrants sleep on cots lined up inside huge, heated tents on a small island with sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline.
But as New York struggles to house a surging number of immigrants from the U.S-Mexico border, there simply isn’t enough space in the sprawling complex on Randall’s Island, now the city’s largest shelter for asylum seekers.
So outside the camp’s gates, a handful of people have pitched their own tents in the cold dead of winter. Many have used up their allowed time in the city’s official shelter system and haven’t been able to secure another spot in the program or find their own places.
“I have many enemies and wouldn’t recommend any of this to any of them,” said Eliana Trillo, a woman from Venezuela who was sleeping in the unsanctioned tent camp last week during some of the most frigid nights of the year. “The cold gets in from everywhere.”
Nearby, entrepreneurial immigrants set up a rudimentary marketplace at the shelter’s entrance, hawking everything from homemade coffee to cigarettes, sneakers and jeans. With residents banned from cooking in city shelters, some prepared meals in a nearby public restroom, slicing raw meat on the men’s room sink next to the urinals and toilet stalls.
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