As temperatures hovered around freezing in New York City, migrants carrying plastic shopping bags walked up the road to low-slung white tents circled by barbed wire and security checkpoints. In November, New York City Mayor Eric Adams opened a 2,000-capacity migrant tent city at Floyd Bennett Field, right next to Dead Horse Bay in Brooklyn. For three years, 84 acres of Dead Horse Bay have been closed to the public due to concerns about radioactive and chemical contaminants.
Since the spring of 2022, more than 150,000 migrants have arrived in New York City, a sanctuary city that has historically upheld the right to shelter. As of September, about two-thirds of the more than 60,000 migrants staying in city shelters were families with children.
David Yanqui, from Ecuador, said in Spanish that children are especially vulnerable to cold conditions.
“We cannot take the kids out because the kids suffer very, very much from the cold and also fall sick,” he said.
But bathrooms are outside, even for children. “At night, when we go out to the bathroom or anywhere else, we do get very cold because the tents only emit heat inside the tents,” Yanqui said. “More than anything, it is about faith.”
Stephanie Rudolph, a public interest attorney at Legal Aid Society, said, “Even if you look at a detention center or prison, you get to go to the bathroom inside.”
Legal Aid Society has been trying to get Floyd Bennett Field to be flipped for use by singles, rather than families. It has convinced the city not to house pregnant people or babies under 6 months there.
“It’s kids that are paying this price. That’s not OK,” Rudolph said.
While the Adams administration has acknowledged the cold temperatures and said it would increase temperatures to 75 degrees, it has not demonstrated awareness of other potential environmental hazards around the tent city.
During the late 19th century, Dead Horse Bay was a dumping area for horse carcasses. Local factories would convert their body parts into fertilizer and other industrial products before throwing what remained in the bay.
In the mid-20th century, urban planner Robert Moses razed working class, mainly Black neighborhoods to make room for highways. The city dumped the debris from people’s homes onto the landfill, using it to connect the island to Brooklyn. It evicted local communities living there to create a naval base.
But the city did not cap the landfill properly, resulting in the exposure of toxic materials from sea and air erosion. As a result, the National Park Service, which currently has jurisdiction over the land, made the decision to close a significant portion to the public in August 2020.
Advocates were not aware of this history of environmental injustice but said that in light of this, settling migrants on Floyd Bennett Field would amount to environmental racism.
“It would be a very blatant form of environmental racism. Unquestionably,” said Christine Clarke, the chief of litigation and advocacy at Legal Services NYC. “That would explain why it’s an empty field, honestly. I mean, they’re redeveloping everything.”
According to Donald Whitehead, the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, “This isn’t anything new at all. This is a practice that has consistently been used to locate low-income housing, to locate spaces for immigrants entering this country.”
“It really sends a message that there are some lives that are not as valuable in our country,” he said. “Some of these policies that are centuries-old are still having a negative impact on low-income people of color.”
More recently, damning reports of the U.S. Navy storing and dumping steel drums of radioactive waste from Floyd Bennett Field have emerged. In a secret journal kept during the time, naval sailor George Albernaz recorded how the Navy would not follow safety or documentation procedures while disposing of this radioactive waste. He also said that the most toxic waste of all would leave from Floyd Bennett Field.
Amid the atmosphere of fear and militarization, there appears to be little scope to dig into why, exactly, this enormous empty space exists in Brooklyn and why migrants have been moved here in particular.
Yanqui spoke to Prism on the road leading to the tent city. Although Prism attempted to enter to observe the conditions, privately contracted security was hostile to potential visitors. One guard refused to talk to the press or show any written evidence that journalists were not allowed inside. At another checkpoint, two guards got out of a vehicle and one immediately threatened to call NYPD.
One man speaking on the phone a few hundred feet from the entrance backed away when Prism approached, saying that he worked there and did not want to speak to the press.
“It might be because people are there that there’s a privacy issue that they’re citing, but I don’t know of any rule or law. My guess is this has to do more with their optics, their policies,” Rudolph said.
Legal Aid Society representatives were able to tour the tents before they opened. They toured them once more on Dec. 6 to follow up on the conditions, a day after housing advocates across organizations marched on New York City and Albany in support of the right to shelter.
Cars containing local family and friends regularly drove in to meet migrants and take them where they needed to go. Prism asked to speak to one group receiving people by car. A woman in the passenger seat respectfully declined as the armed guards continued to watch.
Others without personal connections in New York had the option of taking the shuttle, which leaves every 90 minutes. As Prism saw, most chose to walk. Aside from shopping bags, they only had lanyards holding transparent plastic sleeves that displayed MetroCards facing out.
“I heard that people are walking, and I can’t imagine how because we drove in, and it took forever,” Rudolph said. The road also filled with a constant line of police vehicles going in and out, contributing to the sense of surveillance.
Even though the beach at Dead Horse Bay has been closed for public use, there were still people on motorbikes and walking dogs around Barren Island. Despite many other roads with prohibited entry, there was a small community garden.
Brooklyn resident Eduardo Luna drove here to walk his dogs. It was the first time he saw the camp.
“We usually come here, but today we saw these tents. I think it’s about the people who are coming here from South America. I think this is the shelter,” he said.
“It was really packed already in the city, so I guess they decided to move it here. But I don’t have a lot of knowledge on the subject,” Luna said. “We come from Mexico. We understand. We wish them the best.”
At the Sheepshead Bay subway station, the nearest stop to Floyd Bennett Field, taxis idled outside. However, the station was closed, turnstiles were strung with red tape, and another shuttle was supposed to take general passengers to the next station.
Taxi driver Ijaz Ahmed said in Urdu, “I work here in Sheepshead Bay, and some people give me the address 3154 Emmons Ave. There is a family house, for people without a house or a car. The government takes them in a shuttle there and gives them a room. So I drop them. That’s it, all I know is that they’re there, the number is 3154.”
3154 Emmons Ave. is between the tent city and the subway station, suggesting that shuttles do not go all the way to the station, as they are meant to.
Advocates fear that the conditions in the tent city are strategic.
“I am generally worried that there is a desire to house people in unacceptable conditions as a way to try and deter future migration to New York City,” Clarke said. “It’s hard for me to think of any other reason why they would really try to do this to kids … You just can’t use these kids as a bargaining chip.”
According to reports, there are plans to open a charter school near Floyd Bennett Field in the next two years. Meanwhile, the cleanup at Dead Horse Bay might take up to 20 years.
From the migrant tent city to a potential school, placing people, especially vulnerable minors, at a site of radioactive and chemical contamination is unjust and unsafe.
