New York City wants to start housing migrants in the former Manhattan jail that once held notorious inmates John Gotti, Bernie Madoff and “El Chapo’’ — before it was shut down after Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide.

Big Apple officials flagged its proposal to shelter asylum seekers in the now-defunct federal Metropolitan Correctional Center lockup in Lower Manhattan in an Aug. 9 letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration.

The push comes as Mayor Eric Adams frantically tries to ease pressure on the city’s already struggling shelter system as the relentless influx of tens of thousands of migrants continues.

In addition to the hotels being rented by the city for housing and various “tent cities” set up across the five boroughs, the letter, written by a senior counsel in the city’s Law Department, identifies several other potential migrant shelter sites — including the infamous former federal lockup that shuttered in 2021.

The federal jail — long accused of being filthy, rodent- and bug-infested and suffering from water and sewage leaks — was shuttered after facing fresh scrutiny because of its squalid conditions and security lapses that were exposed in the wake of Epstein’s 2019 death.

The jail had a typical population of 600 inmates when open. Its prisoners have included the late Gambino crime family boss Gotti, Ponzi scheme master Madoff, Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Epstein, a sex trafficker and pedophile who hanged himself in his cell.

“While we decline to comment concerning governmental correspondence, we can provide; MCC New York is closed, at least temporarily, and long-term plans for MCC New York have not been finalized,” the federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement.

Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, was quick to slam the push to house asylum seekers at the former jail.

“Mayor Adams likes to say that all options are on the table when it comes to housing asylum seekers, but certain places should most definitely be off the table,” Awawdeh said.

“The Metropolitan Correctional Center was a notoriously decrepit jail and is not a suitable place to support people trying to build a new life in a new country.”

In additional to the federal jail, city officials requested that Hochul make state-owned properties available to house incoming migrants, including the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center and State University of New York dormitories.

The Javitz has been used to process migrants. Meanwhile, a majority of New Yorkers are opposed to the dorm option, according to a poll released in late June.

The Big Apple’s handling of the crisis sparked a stunningly harsh response this week from the Hochul administration, which accused City Hall of being slow to act and ignoring repeated offers of state assistance.

In a letter fired off Tuesday by Hochul’s lawyer, the state said it had offered a list of potential shelter sites as early as October 2022 — only to be ignored by city officials.

The city is housing upward of 58,500 migrants in roughly 200 taxpayer-funded emergency shelters, according to City Hall’s latest data. Since April last year, more than 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the Big Apple.

“As we have said repeatedly, with more than 100,000 asylum seekers that have come through our care since the Spring of 2022, New York City has been left largely alone to deal with a national humanitarian crisis,” a spokesperson for Adams said in a statement.

“We have already stood up more than 200 emergency sites and are running out of space every day. We have looked at more than 3,000 sites, and, given the magnitude of this emergency, every option remains on the table.

“We continue to call on our federal and state partners to provide us with the help we desperately need.”

With Post wires