Migrants hurl bottles, backpacks at NYPD during shelter fracas

Chaotic video has emerged showing a group of NYPD officers struggling to arrest a man inside the Randall’s Island migrant tent shelter last week, with several rowdy residents pelting police with objects like cushions, backpacks and water bottles.

The frantic scene took place at around 11 a.m. Thursday morning when police tried to eject a man from the controversial tent city, which lies between Manhattan and Queens. The sprawling 2,000-countable tent shelter was the scene of a fatal stabbing last month, while in a separate incident in January, a man was stabbed in the neck.

Police were called to last week’s fracas when the suspect, who hasn’t been identified, was involved in a verbal dispute with security and acting in a disorderly fashion, the NYPD told Fox News Digital.

Police try to make an arrest during a melee in a migrant shelter. (TikTok/gym_vida_sana)

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Video shows the suspect refusing to leave and then mayhem erupting as around five police officers try to forcibly remove him. Police did not reveal his age or if he is a migrant. It is unclear what led to the confrontation; the suspect was later charged with trespassing.

In the video posted to TikTok by @gym_vida_sana, police can be seen grappling with the suspect who is dressed in a white T-shirt and black pants as the whistling and jeering crowd grows louder.

At one point, a police officer can be seen pulling his baton in an effort to push back the encroaching and restless crowd. 

One migrant is so enraged that when he shouts at police, he jumps up into the air, wagging his finger.

Left, a backpack is thrown at police; right, NYPD personnel run to the entrance while being attacked with objects. (TikTok/gym_vida_sana)

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Another migrant flings a cushion at an officer, striking him in the face. Seconds later, a backpack flies in the direction of a female officer who has just drawn her baton. The backpack hits her on the side of her head and momentarily knocks her off balance, the footage shows.

Seconds later, what appears to be a blue bottle full of water can be seen airborne, but luckily it doesn’t hit any of the police officers. Some onlookers can be seen recording the scene on their phones.

Security can then be seen helping the arresting police officers eventually cuff the resisting suspect.

He is then lifted and hauled out of the tent as more objects are hurled in the direction of the police. No injuries were reported.

The Randall's Island migrant shelter was built in 2023. (Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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"Two men started fighting, and when the cops tried to intervene that’s when people started hurling bottles and bags," "Umayro," a migrant from Kyrgyzstan, told the New York Post.

Another resident told the publication that the incident was "terrifying but normal" for the tent city, which was built last year as New York City struggled to get a grip on the influx of migrants. Mayor Eric Adams has said the illegal migrant crisis could cost the city as much as $12 billion through 2025. At least 170,000 illegal migrants have arrived in New York since spring 2022.

On Jan. 6, Moises Coronado, 27, allegedly plunged a 5-inch blade into 24-year-old Dafren Canizalez at the migrant shelter after the pair got into an argument in the cafeteria. 

Thursday's incident comes two weeks after a group of migrants attacked two police officers in Times Square.