More than 100 Big Apple residents and elected officials rallied outside Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field on Sunday, calling on city leaders to shut down a troublesome migrant tent city at the federal site.
Fired-up locals draped in US flags converged on the massive site in a 90-vehicle long caravan and demanded that City Hall not renew a lease for the 2,000-bed migrant shelter that has been the focus of neighborhood complaints since it opened last year.
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“We need to speak up about exactly what, you know, where this is gonna go and where, how is it going to end?” Lee said. “Is it gonna end?”
Cars and trucks pulled up to the scene with signs hanging from their windows reading “preserve the American dream” and “stop migrant crime” – as well as “revoke the lease to Floyd Bennett.”
“There are other places now that the migrants from that base camp can go,” city Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Brooklyn) told protesters at the site. “We need to be able to go to our national park and enjoy it. That was taken from us.
“It’s been taken from us this summer and it must not be renewed,” she said.
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Floyd Bennett Field is one of scores of shelters throughout the five boroughs converted into shelters to accommodate thousands of migrants who have flooded into the Big Apple since 2022.
The vast majority are asylum seekers who crossed the US border with Mexico and were shipped north to “sanctuary cities” like New York – and who have overburdened the city’s capacity to house them.
The Post reported in January that the former airfield had become a hotbed of unrest and violence since the site was converted into a migrant shelter. The shelter saw a domestic assault in December and has been the site of a string of assault arrests – and even a gun bust, according to police.
In January migrants, including children had to be briefly evacuated from the site in the middle of the night as dangerous winds closed in on the city, raising concerns of toppled tents or fatal flooding.
Local residents have continually griped about their unruly and unwanted neighbors.
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“It’s not safe for the migrants. It’s a flood plain and it’s horrible for the neighborhood and the quality of life,” he added. “We’re going to keep the pressure on until we close Floyd Bennett Field.”
* Original Article:
https://nypost.com/2024/06/23/us-news/fired-up-new-yorkers-protest-troublesome-migrant-tent-city-were-going-to-keep-the-pressure-on/?utm_source=smartnews&utm_campaign=nypost&utm_medium=referral