The mayor of New York City announced on Monday that the city would be ending its $220 million lease agreement with the Roosevelt Hotel, owned by Pakistan International Airlines, following criticism of American taxpayers’ money being used to house asylum seekers.

The hotel closed in 2020 due to continued financial losses associated with the Covid-19 pandemic and reopened in 2023 as a shelter for asylum seekers deported to liberal states by the conservative governor of Texas.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, facing pressure from both the federal government and right-wing hardliners, announced the facility’s closure on Monday.

He credited the closure to the administration’s successful emergency response and policy decisions, stating that it would help the city save millions of taxpayers’ dollars.

The hotel reportedly housed tens of thousands of migrants across its 1,025 rooms at an estimated cost of $200 per night.

The city has seen a sharp decline in weekly migrant arrivals, dropping from 4,000 at the peak of the crisis in 2023 to approximately 350 now.

The Roosevelt Hotel served as a key processing centre, handling around 75 per cent of migrants who arrived in the city.

In June 2023, the government began leasing out the hotel to the New York City Administration for three years against $220m.

In February 2024, the caretaker government signed an agreement with a US consortium for the joint venture development of the Roosevelt Hotel as the privatisation process of the loss-making PIA neared completion.

Later in August that year, the board of the Privatisation Commission recommended a joint venture as the most suitable transaction structure for the hotel.

The 19-storey building — with 1,025 rooms, named after former US President Theodore Roosevelt — opened its door to America’s rich and famous in 1924, almost 100 years ago. Now, most of its tenants are illegal refugees from neighbouring Latin American nations, although some are from distant regions as well.

In 1979, an American real estate developer Paul Milstein leased the hotel to PIA. In 2000, PIA and Saudi Prince Faisal bin Khalid bought the hotel, and PIA then acquired Prince Faisal’s ownership stake.