'They Are Now Free:' 1M Graves Liberated From Corrections Dept

NEW YORK CITY — More than one million New Yorkers buried in unmarked graves on an island off the coast of The Bronx are no longer a part of the penal system.

Hart Island — where veterans, the poor, people who died of AIDS and countless others have been buried for more than a century — will be open to the public after Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation releasing it from Department of Corrections control.

"How we handle this situation says something about who we are as New Yorkers," the mayor said at City Hall Wednesday morning. "New York City will not accept injustice in life or in death."

De Blasio signed four bills transferring Hart Island to Parks Department control, mandating the Department of Transportation provide access to the burial grounds, ordering a public hearing on future use of the island, and creating an office of burial services.

The Department of Corrections has managed burial grounds — the country’s largest taxpayer-funded cemetery — for more than 150 years.

Under DOC management, family members were required to request permission to visit Hart Island through a system so convoluted it spurred a class action lawsuit from the New York Civil Liberties Union, settled in 2015.

Melinda Hunt — of the The Hart Island Project, which orchestrated island visits and advocated for the new legislation — appeared at the Blue Room bill signing to thank city officials for the new law.

"Their bodies will now be respectfully buried," said Hunt. "It’s so important that we keep hart Island open."

The legislation, which takes immediate effect, comes after a decade of advocacy from family members who detailed fruitless searching an island of mass graves for the burial sites of their children, whom they've never found.

"I never thought this day would come, ever," said Elaine Joseph, whose daughter is buried in an unmarked Hart Island grave. "I want to tell her daughter and all her million friends she has with her they now have dignity.

"Now they’re buried in a beautiful park and not in the penal system," said Joseph. "They are now free."