New York to close giant family shelter to protect migrants from Trump

NEW YORK – New York City officials announced on Dec 10 that they will close a giant tent complex in Brooklyn that houses some 2,000 migrants, a pre-emptive step meant to fend off concerns that the shelter could be targeted by the Trump administration.

Because the shelter, on Floyd Bennett Field, was built on federal land, the administration of Mayor Eric Adams increasingly feared that President-elect Donald Trump would revoke the shelter’s lease once he takes office in January – or assert the administration’s right to launch immigration raids on federal land.

The Floyd Bennett Field shelter is among 25 shelters that will now shut down by March because of a steady decline in the number of migrants arriving over the past five months.

Those include hotels across the city, two college dormitories in Upper Manhattan and a warehouse-turned-shelter at Kennedy Airport, as well as 10 hotels the city was paying to house migrants upstate.

The slate of closures was yet another signal of how the city’s migrant crisis, which prompted the city to spend more than US$6 billion (S$8 billion) over two years to house migrants, has continued to wind down.

Mr Adams, a Democrat who has been cautious about antagonising Trump, did not name the President-elect as a reason for the closure of the Floyd Bennett Field shelter, the only one in New York City on federal land.

City officials said the lease would end by March, but that families would be moved out of the shelter by Jan 15, just a few days before Trump is sworn into office.

“We’re going to continue looking for more sites to consolidate and close, and more opportunities to save taxpayer money, as we continue to successfully manage this response,” Mr Adams said in a statement.

Some of the shelter closings had already been announced or reported in the news media, such as another tent complex on Randall’s Island, which will close by February. Migrants living in those shelters will be transferred to others in the system, which is housing 54,900 migrants, down from a peak of 69,000 in January.

The tent complex on Floyd Bennett Field, the city’s third-largest family shelter, has housed migrant families with children since November 2023.

The city entered into a lease with the Biden administration to erect the tent dormitory, where families sleep in cots, as city officials scrambled to find beds for migrants at the height of the influx in 2023.

But after Trump’s victory in November, City Hall officials grew concerned that the President-elect would cancel the lease the moment he took office, following opposition from local Republicans who said it amounted to wasteful spending of taxpayer money.

Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, had committed state money to reimburse the city for the shelter’s operations and would continue to finance an equivalent number of beds for migrants in other shelters using existing budgeted funds, city officials said.

City officials, as well as immigration lawyers, also worried that the shelter could become an easy target for federal Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents looking to detain immigrants in the country illegally.

Under current city guidelines, ICE officers require hard-to-obtain judicial warrants to enter city shelters, but the shelter’s location on federal land raised concerns that federal agents could easily gain access.

Migrant families at the shelter expressed mixed feelings on Dec 10 as they awaited a scheduled meeting that would shed light on the closure and the relocation process.

Some wondered if their children would have to re-enrol at different schools. Others hoped to be placed in shelters with more adequate heating. But despite its less-than-ideal conditions, many said they were grateful to be living in the tent refuge, praising its social workers, translation services and free childcare options that allowed parents to work.

“There are always good things and bad things about shelters, but the workers here are very competent,” Ms Katioska Colmenanrez, a Venezuelan mother of three, said as she walked her youngest child to school.

The tent shelter had been the subject of a bipartisan lawsuit that argued that its construction skirted laws meant to protect national parkland. Immigration activists also opposed housing migrants there, saying the tent set-up was inhumane and that its location, miles away from more populated areas of the city, made it harder for migrants to reach jobs and schools.

The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless welcomed the closure, but noted in a joint statement that they were “closely monitoring these closures and transfers to ensure new arrivals’ access to shelter and protection from any potential federal immigration enforcement dragnets”.

Republican Representative Nicole Malliotakis of New York, who vociferously rallied against the shelter, said that “the re-election of President Trump was the final nail in the coffin to secure this closure, restore order in our community and put American citizens first”.

Families at the shelter said they were hoping that Trump did not attempt to upend their efforts to attain asylum – a form of legal protection granted to people fleeing persecution – before their scheduled court dates, usually months away.

Ms Yelimar Briceno, a Venezuelan mother of two who has been living in the shelter for a year, summed up the feelings expressed by many: “Waiting is all that we can do,” she said.

Mr David Maranguello, 40, who said he had escaped gang violence and extortion threats in Colombia, said the shelter’s far-flung location had complicated his job search but that it was a minor inconvenience compared with the uncertainty surrounding Trump’s deportation plans.

“Every president has said that they would like to clean things up,” said Mr Maranguello, who has lived in the shelter with his wife and two children for just over a month. “But it gives me fear because Donald Trump is more vocal than others.” NYTIMES