New York Metropolis is shrinking the massive emergency shelter system it created to accommodate tens of hundreds of migrants because the variety of new arrivals steadily drops and President-elect Donald Trump has promised mass deportations upon regaining the White Home subsequent month.
In its newest transfer, Mayor Eric Adams introduced Tuesday that an enormous tent shelter housing greater than 1,800 migrants on a distant, former airport in Brooklyn will shut Jan. 15, with residents transferred to different websites.
The Democrat mentioned the shelter joins 25 places lately shuttered or earmarked for closure, together with one other enormous tent advanced on an island park off Manhattan that the mayor beforehand introduced will shut in February.
For the reason that November election, migrants and their advocates have centered their efforts on urging the Democratic administration to shut the Floyd Bennett Discipline shelter and relocate households dwelling there out of concern they’d be prime targets for Trump’s mass deportation plan, given the location’s on federal land.
Mariama Barry, a 26-year-old from Guinea, has been dwelling the previous 12 months on the airfield. The one mom of two younger youngsters mentioned she and different shelter residents feared what would possibly occur when Trump takes workplace.
She mentioned returning to her West African homeland merely isn’t an possibility as a result of she fled to flee a compelled marriage and to stop her younger daughter from being subjected to genital mutilation.
“I thought we were going to be safe here,” Barry mentioned, talking outdoors the shelter’s safety gate final week. “Now (Trump) is here again talking about deportation, taking people back to where we’ve been running from, so we’re concerned, we’re worried.”
Advocates equally applauded the announcement. However mentioned they’ll carefully monitor the subsequent steps to make sure migrants are protected against any potential federal immigration enforcement actions and that any disruptions to high school, work, well being care and different vital companies are minimized.
“Floyd Bennett Field – a semi-congregate facility where families with children live in tents on an unused airfield mired in a flood zone, miles from schools, and other services – was always the wrong location to shelter vulnerable families with young children,” the Authorized Help Society and Coalition for the Homeless mentioned in a joint assertion.
The pending closure of the airfield and different websites is the most recent step the Democratic administration has taken to wind down New York Metropolis’s response to an inflow of roughly 250,000 migrants to town because the spring of 2022.
Not less than 11 different shelters offering roughly 1,800 beds closed in November, together with one in an remoted warehouse at John F. Kennedy Airport and one other in a 19-story, former school dormitory on Manhattan’s Higher East Aspect.
The administration has additionally dedicated to closing all 10 shelters town operates in 5 upstate counties by month’s finish.
However for weeks Adams has declined to elaborate on the way forward for Floyd Bennett Discipline. His announcement Tuesday additionally did not cite any issues in regards to the incoming Trump administration, which takes workplace Jan. 20 — 5 days after the final of the migrants are anticipated to maneuver out of the airfield, which is a federal historic website, because it had been town’s first airport and later a naval station.
As a substitute, the mayor chalked up the choice, together with different current shelter closures, to his administration’s typically controversial immigration insurance policies, similar to imposing limits for a way lengthy migrants can stay underneath town’s care.
“Thanks to our smart management strategies, we’ve turned the corner, and this additional slate of shelter closures we’re announcing today is even more proof that we’re managing this crisis better than any other city in the nation,” he mentioned Tuesday, including the work would proceed to search out extra websites to consolidate and shut and “save taxpayer cash.”
New York, like different main U.S. cities, has seen new migrant arrivals steadily decline because the summer time.
The town’s shelter system at the moment offers housing to roughly 55,000 migrants throughout roughly 200 momentary websites, down from a peak of almost 70,000 migrants in January, the administration says.
Greater than 500 new migrants entered town system within the week ending Dec. 1, down from a peak of three,450 the week ending Jan. 7, in response to metropolis knowledge.
Different cities have equally wound down migrant shelter operations as arrivals have waned partially due to new asylum restrictions imposed by President Joe Biden in June.
Denver closed its final short-term housing location in October after housing as many as 5,000 migrants throughout ten amenities in January. Chicago is at the moment housing roughly 2,700 migrants in 7 remaining websites, down from 15,000 migrants dwelling in 28 momentary shelters final December.
