First migrants arrive at NYC’s Floyd Bennett Field — only to scoff and leave isolated site after just one look-around: ‘Disaster waiting to happen’
The first batch of migrants was bused to Floyd Bennett Field’s makeshift tent city in Brooklyn on Sunday — and wanted no part of it.
Dozens of migrant families arrived at the controversial remote housing site courtesy of the Adams administration shortly after 12:30 p.m., looked around and promptly hopped back on the bus to try to return to their previous shelters.
“We weren’t told where we were going,” one of the bused migrant dads griped to The Post. “I work in the Bronx. My kids go to school in the Bronx. For us to live out here is ridiculous.
“We’re going back,” he fumed.
Another migrant father bused to the field said he has been living at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, the city processing site for the migrants — and was heading back there.
“They are going to take us back to the train so we can go back to 45th Street,” he said. “We didn’t know we were coming here. They just said they were taking us to a shelter.
“I cannot stay here,” he added. “This is crazy.”
About 2,000 asylum seekers from the US border with Mexico are expected to eventually be housed at the site, which has drawn widespread criticism for everything from its remote location to fire safety concerns.
State Assemblywoman Jaime Williams (D-Brooklyn), whose district includes the national park, was at the field Sunday and spoke with a man who told her he was with the city’s Health & Hospitals system and had talked with some of the migrants.
“When I asked him why did they leave immediately like that, he said the people, they were scared,” the pol said. “They weren’t sure what they were doing here. They don’t want to be here, and they asked to leave.
“They said, ‘It’s so isolated, how could I possibly get back and forth to work?’ or, ‘Getting my children to school from here would be insane.’ So they all asked to leave.
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” she added of the situation at the budding tent city.
“It’s one of the coldest days so far. There’s going to be a frost tonight,” Williams noted. “It’s not the ideal location for anyone to live. There’s no supermarket. There’s no infrastructure.”
“I’m going to reach out to the Legal Aid Society and the mayor and the governor and ask them to revoke the lease on this site,” she said.
A spokesman for Adams said Sunday that while some migrants did reject the site and signed release forms, others — including a second busload that arrived shortly before 2:30 p.m. — opted to remain.
“As we have said time and time again, more than 139,500 asylum seekers have moved through our intake system since the spring of 2022, all of whom have been offered vital services,” the spokesman said in a statement.
“But with more than 65,600 migrants still currently in our care, and thousands more continuing to arrive every week, we have used every possible corner of New York City and are quite simply out of good options to shelter migrants,” he said.
An administration source added that the migrants were warned that the city had no other space for them. The asylum seekers who left will be allowed to return to Floyd Bennett if they want, the source said.
A bus driver said workers were stunned when many of the migrants bused to the site refused to stay.
“We were shocked when they turned around and left — shocked,” the driver told The Post. “Only a few people stayed. We didn’t see that coming.”
Big Apple fire officials had warned that the one-time federal airfield is dangerously ill-suited to house anyone given its remote location and fire hydrants that are a half-mile away and largely “not reliable.”
Fire inspectors also raised concerns that asylum seekers will be allowed to have e-bikes — used by many migrants to work underground food delivery jobs — at the site. The bikes are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which have sparked a number of deadly blazes in the city.
Two FDNY satellite units that would be needed to respond to a fire at the field also are supposed to cover the entire borough of Brooklyn, raising further concerns.
In September, US Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), who chairs the House National Resources Committee, was among nearly two dozen lawmakers on Capitol Hill raising questions about the plan at the federal facility.
Westerman said the former airfield, which is currently a national park, is not “a place to temporarily or permanently encamp persons experiencing a lack of housing,” regardless of “personal or political beliefs on immigration or migrant policy.”
Last week, even former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, speaking to an audience at a packed Brooklyn church, said the decision to use the field as a migrant shelter “defies common sense.”
But Adams has assured that precautions are in place to ensure safety at the site, including an outdoor area for the e-bikes to be stored and shuttle service into the five boroughs.
City officials are also working out the logistics to ensure that migrant children housed at the site have bus transportation to get to classes at distant public schools.
Adams has limited options to deal with the 140,000 migrants — more than 65,000 of whom are still in city care — who have flooded the Big Apple from the border since the spring of 2022.
City Hall has sparked a backlash by converting shuttered schools, hotels and other facilities into emergency shelters for the migrants while pleading with the White House for help.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, who got approval from the Biden administration to use Floyd Bennett Field for migrants after months of haggling with the White House, has also called on the feds to do more.
On Sunday morning, the six tents set up on a runway at the former Brooklyn airfield were prepped for the arrival of migrants, with a city bus waiting and several mini-buses used to shuttle workers to the site.
The FDNY on Sunday referred questions from The Post to officials at City Hall.
Additional reporting by Valentina Jaramillo
