Migrant parents and children on a recent morning lugged suitcases across the wind-swept tarmac to the Q35 bus stop outside the remote Floyd Bennett Field tent complex, beginning a two-hour trek to the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where families can seek a new shelter placement.
Some of the families who have already moved out have received new rooms at a shelter for families in Clinton Hill or at hotels scattered across the city.
And all residents must be out by Jan. 15, when the Floyd Bennett migrant complex is slated to close, five days before President-elect Donald Trump assumes power with a promise of mass deportations. The shelter, located at a former airfield, is the only one on federal land.
“I think everyone is a little more relaxed now that we’re leaving,” said Jehinzo Gonzalez, 47, in Spanish.
The Venezuelan asylum-seeker was moving out of the shelter on Thursday morning with his wife and three kids and said Trump’s mass deportation agenda hung heavily over its residents.
“We were very worried. It’s what you heard in the hallways, in the dining room, in the bathrooms everywhere. Fear about the possible massive deportations,” Gonzalez said. “My kids were asking me, ‘Dad what happens if the police come and they take us away? Are they going to separate us? What are we going to do?’”
While some residents said they were relieved and eager for shelter placements closer to city services, the closure itself has come with some turmoil.
“It’s been hectic,” said Ariana Hellerman, a volunteer with Floyd Bennett Field Neighbors, a mutual aid group that recently gave away 300 suitcases in a three-day span. The organization has provided medicine, clothing and other essentials to residents of the shelter since it opened last year.
No information was shared with residents in writing, Hellerman said, which several residents confirmed. Instead, families got varying instructions from their individual caseworkers, and rumors spread. A rush of families headed to the Roosevelt Hotel, the city’s main intake for migrant families, to seek another shelter spot. Some of those families were reassigned right away, while others were sent back to Floyd Bennett to wait for later move-out dates, Hellerman said.
“It’s just been a very frantic process,” she said. “Even though everyone is guaranteed a spot, there’s still this fear that, ‘If I’m the last one, there’s not going to be anything left.’’’
Floyd Bennett Field Neighbors is pushing for the city to provide buses to shuttle residents to the Roosevelt Hotel, which they’ve been told will begin this week. They’re asking the city to allow residents to store their belongings temporarily at the tents while seeking a new placement so they don’t have to drag everything with them to Midtown.
“I’ve seen families on the streets lugging three young children, suitcases, and getting lost,” said Leanne Tory-Murphy, another of the group’s volunteers. “I’ve put people personally in taxis myself just when I see them out there not knowing where they are.”
A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Trump Looms
The shelter’s closure comes in the weeks ahead of Trump’s January 20 inauguration.
The federal government could cancel the city’s lease with just 90 days notice, something local Republicans have been lobbying for.
Meanwhile, advocates raised concerns about the unique vulnerability of residents to immigration raids promised by the incoming president. Amid mounting pressure from advocates and residents themselves, the city announced the facility’s planned closure earlier this month, alongside two dozen other emergency shelters in the five boroughs and upstate.
“I don’t know where we’ll end up,” said 45-year-old Maria, a mother of three children, speaking in Spanish outside the shelter Thursday morning. She declined to give her last name, concerned about her pending immigration proceeding.
Maria and her family, from Venezuela, had just surpassed a full year living in the tents and were slated to move out in early January.
A few days earlier her family had been given three hours to pack up their belongings, as shelter workers ushered them into a room in a different tent. Several residents said shelter workers were emptying out one of the tents ahead of the whole facility’s closure, in an effort to consolidate the remaining families.
Residents who spoke with THE CITY mentioned the long commutes to jobs and schools from the airfield, as well as the long walk from the Q35 bus stop, especially in the cold or rain. Others noted regular sightings of roaches, rats and even snakes.
But despite the daily challenges of living at Floyd Bennett, Maria said she was grateful for her time there.
“I give thanks to God, be it as it may. In the winter, in the snow, we always had a roof here,” Maria said. “It would have been a lot worse if we’d been in the streets with the kids.”
