Some migrant families slept on school floors amid NYC storm before pre-dawn return to Floyd Bennett Field
Some migrant families with children were pictured sleeping on the floor of a southern Brooklyn high school Tuesday night after they were among the nearly 2,000 evacuated from their shelter at Floyd Bennett Field due to a dire storm forecast.
A Department of Education memo obtained by the Daily News said there’d be “cots and supplies available” at the James Madison High School in Midwood, where roughly 1,900 migrants spent the night after Mayor Adams’ administration determined it wasn’t safe for them to stay at the Floyd Bennett Field shelter amid the rainstorm.
But a photo released by City Hall shows at least some migrant families with kids slept on the floor of James Madison’s gym.
Asked about the matter Wednesday morning, an Adams spokeswoman said the city provided migrants at James Madison with bedding, supplies and meals. The spokeswoman did not immediately say what happened with the cots referenced in the Department of Education memo or if any were provided.
Carolina Contreras, a Venezuelan migrant who was bused late Tuesday to James Madison with her husband and two kids, told The News there weren’t any cots at the school and that families slept on floors all over the school.
“Everyone had to look for a place to sleep. Everyone was looking for a little corner to put down the sheets and lay down. We had to sleep on the floor,” said Contreras, whose kids are 9 and 11.
According to the city’s Emergency Management, all the migrants who spent the night at James Madison were returned to the Floyd Bennett Field shelters by 5 a.m. Wednesday.
Still, James Madison’s roughly 3,800 students were expected to be on fully remote class schedules Wednesday, according to Adams’ spokeswoman. The spokeswoman said classes were kept remote at the request of James Madison’s principal, who had asked for it after the Adams administration decided to evacuate migrants from the Floyd Bennett shelters and house them at the school amid the storm.
After getting back to Floyd Bennett Field before the sun came up, Contreras, 36, said she didn’t send her kids to school Wednesday because “we didn’t sleep all night.”
“We put two sheets on the floor and we lay down,” she said. “The kids spent all night wide awake, looking around. We couldn’t sleep because it was so uncomfortable.”
Tuesday night’s storm caused 61 miles per hour winds across the city and dumped upward of 3 inches of rain, according to the city Emergency Management agency.
Amid those conditions, Adams’ administration decided it wasn’t safe to keep migrants housed in the tent-style shelters at Floyd Bennett Field, which is located in a flood zone.
The decision to move the migrants to James Madison stoked intense pushback from voices across the political spectrum.
Several local Republican lawmakers, including Brooklyn Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, lamented on X that James Madison students “are being punished and forced to bear the brunt of the migrant crisis” by having to switch to remote schooling on short notice.
Migrant advocates and left-wing politicians said the last-minute relocation effort shows why Floyd Bennett Field shouldn’t be used as the site for a migrant shelter at all, with City Comptroller Brad Lander slamming it as a “waste of money.”
In an appearance on 1010WINS radio Tuesday evening, Adams pushed back against Lander, saying he should “tone down some of his comments and be more supportive of those hardworking civil servants that are stretched to the maximum.”
“He should join team New York and help us navigate through this,” Adams said of Lander.
According to the latest data from Adams’ office, the city continues to provide shelter and services for nearly 70,000 migrants, most of whom fled poverty and violence in Latin American countries in hopes of claiming asylum in the U.S. To date, the city has spent more than $3 billion on the crisis, prompting Adams to enact budget cuts across all municipal agencies that he says are necessary to offset the migrant-related spending.
