NEW YORK (AP) — When New York City officials erected a sprawling tent complex at a remote former Brooklyn airport to house asylum seekers late last year, many of the newcomers and their advocates questioned the wisdom of placing thousands of people in a flood-prone area, miles away from schools and other services, just as winter arrived.
Those warnings were justified this week, when forecasts of a storm with torrential rains and intense winds forced a hasty evacuation on Tuesday of the complex built on runway 19 of the old Floyd Bennett Field airport.
Nearly 2,000 people, many of them families with children, were loaded onto municipal buses just as the storm hit and sent to a nearby high school, whereupon school administrators decided to close the building and hold classes remotely the next day.
The situation quickly became a factor of tension in the national debate about the entry of migrants across the southern border of the United States. Conservative politicians and commentators took up the issue, and the school received threatening phone calls. Criticism also renewed over how New York and other big cities are responding to the surge in immigration, as many turn to makeshift accommodation to house the growing number of migrants.
Chicago, which had used police stations and airports to temporarily house migrants, is now turning to municipal buses to alleviate this situation. In Massachusetts, migrants have had to sleep in airport and hospital waiting rooms, as well as in churches. This week, New York City began imposing a 60-day limit on migrant families staying in municipal shelters, many of which are hotels in central Manhattan.
Luis López, a 40-year-old Ecuadorian who has been living in the Brooklyn camp for almost a month, said his family of five slept on the floor of the school cafeteria on Tuesday, only to be woken up in the middle of the night. to return to camp, since the strong winds had calmed down considerably.
After that ordeal, López said she let her three exhausted children miss school, which is almost an hour’s drive from the camp.
“It was a little adventure,” he declared the next day, shrugging his shoulders.
But it was not only migrants and their defenders who complained.
The next day, local politicians and parents in the southeastern corner of Brooklyn, a relatively suburban area about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from midtown Manhattan, staged a protest outside the school, angry that students They would be forced to take classes remotely to accommodate migrants. The school itself received “hate calls” and a bomb threat, officials said Wednesday.
Some prominent conservatives pointed to this development to suggest that the needs of foreign migrants were being prioritized over those of American children. Businessman Elon Musk told his more than 168 million followers on his social network X that after cities run out of schools, “they will come for your houses.”
But critics and many migrants agree that the city must find a better solution than the current one at the former Floyd Bennett Field airport.
“We already warned about this. “Floyd Bennett Field is susceptible to flooding, storms, winds,” said New York Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Republican who represents the area, in a video posted on X this week. “It’s not an acceptable place to house people, but neither are public schools.”
Mayor Eric Adams’ government announced the opening of this set of tents in mid-October, saying the city was “beyond its breaking point” due to the arrival of more than 170,000 migrants since the crisis began in 2022.
Located in Jamaica Bay, between Coney Island and Rockaway Beach, Floyd Bennett Field was New York’s first airport and later served as a naval station during World War II.
The migrant complex, which has been closed to the media since the migrants settled there, includes two large dormitory tents, a living room tent and a dining tent filled with rows of long plastic tables and folding chairs.
The rooms are semi-enclosed, with dividing screens but no roof, according to videos and images provided by residents and their defenders. There is no furniture in the rooms, which are barely large enough to fit the beds. Toilets and showers are in trailers outside the tents.
Yeisi Chirinos, a 25-year-old Venezuelan with three young children, says the beds are not even mattresses, but cots that are not comfortable and from which children can easily fall.
Chirinos is also concerned about the fact that the center is located in such a remote location. If one of her children gets sick and needs something from the pharmacy, for example, she would have to go to the neighborhood center, a few miles away.
“This is not a good place for a family,” Chirinos said upon returning home from a shopping center Wednesday night. “The city has to move us somewhere else.”
Andrés Sánchez, a 34-year-old Colombian, said he never imagined spending the winter in a tent after making the harrowing overland journey across the American continent. But after living at the airfield for more than a month with his wife and three young children, he remains optimistic.
“The conditions are not excellent, but they are not worse than sleeping on the street,” Sánchez said Wednesday afternoon at the gates of the camp. “We have a place to live, sleep and eat, and for that we are grateful.”
One of the main safety concerns when the makeshift shelter was erected was that the airfield’s white tent structures are only anchored to the runway by cement blocks. The city was not allowed to stake them to the ground because the site has been designated a historic site by federal authorities.
Zachary Iscol, Adams’ emergency management commissioner, stressed after Tuesday’s storm that the government has long known that the airfield’s makeshift camp would be tested with the arrival of winter.
City officials, he said, considered evacuating the camp at least three times in advance of possible extreme weather events.
“Everyone in the city understands that Floyd Bennett Field is not an ideal place to house families with children,” Iscol said Wednesday. “This is what we have been given. “It was provided by the state and the federal government, and the responsibility has fallen on us to enable it and make it safe.”
López, the migrant father from Ecuador, suggested that some of the residents’ complaints are exaggerated, although he admitted that he shared their concerns about the facility’s ability to withstand inclement weather.
During recent storms, he said, the sound of rain on the roof echoed inside the store and strong coastal winds shook the exterior cladding of the structure, supported by a metal frame.
“The children don’t worry. They’re happy. “They can sleep in anything,” Lopez said. “But not me. “I stay awake because I worry.”
Izaguirre reported from Albany. Associated Press writer Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.
Philip Marcelo is in X as: twitter.com/philmarcelo
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2024-01-12 03:30:43
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