Thread: Migrants at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field harassed by hostile neighbors as political

Migrants at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field harassed by hostile neighbors as political tensions rise


Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News
Sat, December 23, 2023 at 4:37 PM EST·8 min read



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Migrants at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field harassed by hostile neighbors as political tensions rise


Josephine Stratman/New York Daily News/TNS



NEW YORK — Tired and cold, with two toddlers in tow and a big bag of groceries in hand, Barbara Guarenas boarded the Q35 bus in Brooklyn and headed for a couple of empty seats, telling her children to sit.

But before they could take a seat, another woman on the bus stepped forward. She plopped her purse on one of the seats and used her body to block the family from sitting down. Then she lifted her leg, kicking Guarenas’ 3-year-old son out of the way and sending him stumbling.

The ugly display of hostility is hardly uncommon in this part of New York. Migrant families living at Floyd Bennett Field, located in a conservative stronghold in southern Brooklyn, told the Daily News they’ve been cursed out, spat on and harassed daily by disapproving neighbors.

As political tensions continue to rise ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the migrant tent site, located on a remote peninsula on the edge of the city, has emerged as a new front in the national battle over immigration policy.

Frustration and vitriol are bubbling up at bus stops, on streets, at Kings Plaza Mall and online as desperate, newly arrived migrants, most with no family or friends in New York try to make a life for themselves after being sent by the city to live on the isolated former airfield located in a largely Republican area.

A Facebook group called “STOP FLOYD BENNETT ILLEGAL MIGRANTS” has around 3,600 members. On it, residents post about interactions with migrants in the area, directing people to call 311 to report panhandling and stories of migrants knocking on residents’ doors looking for help.

Earlier this week, when the Kings Plaza Mall in Mill Basin was evacuated due to a bomb threat which was later found unsubstantiated, posts drew quick connections to the migrants.

Another post, a picture of a migrant family sitting on the sidewalk outside a store, got 140 comments, including “Disgraceful… the neighborhood is being destroyed,” “Get your concealed carry!! We’re gonna need it !” and “MASS DEPORTATIONS.”

Guarenas, who arrived in New York City three weeks ago from Venezuela with her husband and her kids aged 3, 4, and 18, said that she’s been shaken by the aggression and rude remarks, especially towards her children, while living at Floyd Bennett Field.

“Things like this happen in the streets, but you have to ignore them because you can get in trouble,” Guarenas, 34, said. “Nobody’s going to defend us. We just have to avoid it. If [the woman on the bus] wants to sit down like that, act like that, you just have to walk away.”

Carolina Contreras, 36, has lived at Floyd Bennett Field for a month. She made the trip from Venezuela to New York City with her husband, Andy Martinez, 42, and her two children, Sofia, 9, and Andy, 11.

She said it’s tough to watch her kids get harassed — they may not fully understand what’s going on, but it’s obvious that many of the tent site’s neighbors don’t want them there.
“My daughter once unintentionally stepped on a man and the man spat at us, shouted at us and told us things,” Contreras said. “We had to get off the bus. People also tell us we smell bad, they cover their nose.”

“It’s ugly, but, I mean…” Contreras trailed off. “You leave your land, your house, your country. In the course of all that, you see a lot. People reject you because you come from somewhere else. There is a lot of xenophobia, they look at us rudely, and they treat us badly. … I don’t pay much attention to it now because it’s like, I’ve already been through a lot of it.”

National politics ripple locally

The historic influx of migrants coming from the southern border is already one of the cornerstone issues of next year’s elections — and New York City is at the heart of both the migrant crisis and the political debate on how to handle it.

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, has pledged that if elected, he will implement a hard-line immigration policy that would include mass deportations, the completion of the border wall, new travel bans and an end to automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. to immigrants living in the country illegally.

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” the Republican presidential front-runner said at a rally in New Hampshire last weekend.

“They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world,” Trump continued.

“Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia. All over the world. They’re pouring into our country.”

His remarks quickly drew outrage and comparisons to Adolf Hitler. On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams condemned Trump’s comments as “volatile terminology, rhetoric.”

“I’m not spewing rhetoric,” Adams said. “I’m advocating for the city that I love. And I’m watching firsthand what is happening to the city that I loved and I protected as a police officer.”

Yet Adams has come under fire for his own controversial remarks on how the issue will “destroy New York City.” The mayor has also pinned recent budget cuts, with plans to slash city departments including the Education Department and cut library service, on the influx of asylum seekers.

New York has received more than 150,000 migrants over the past year and a half. Around 65,000 of them remain in the city’s shelter system.

Despite Adams’ poor approval rating, a recent poll showed that more than 80% of voters are concerned that the city will not be able to accommodate the surge of migrants, and 62% agreed with his comments that the tide of migrants could destroy the city.

Locally, residents of southern Brooklyn unhappy with what they see as an invasion of their home and waste of their tax dollars rallied and protested when the site was announced. While calls for 24/7 protests of Floyd Bennett Field have faded, the opposition to the migrants there has remained.

“So much of this community out here is just drinking the Trump Kool-Aid,” said Ariana Hellerman, a Rockaway local who’s been collecting and doling out donations for the residents of Floyd Bennett Field. “A lot of it is spouting what they have heard, which is falsehoods.”

Hellerman called out what she sees as a lack of empathy — many speaking out locally against the migrants are immigrants or children of immigrants themselves — and false conceptions that providing for migrants means that longtime residents lose out.

Migrants say some help, some hurt

The shelter currently houses around 1,700 migrant families. The setup is not ideal: It’s about a 15-minute wind-whipped walk from the tents across an old airplane runway and huge empty parking lot just to get to a bus, and bathrooms are located outside, so families have to bundle up to shower or use the restroom.

A loose network of volunteers have been stopping by the 2,000-bed, four-tent shelter on a near-everyday basis, bringing the migrants essentials like winter clothing and diapers.

Migrants said the volunteers somewhat balance out the cruelty they see elsewhere.

“There are two kinds of people around here,” said a 28-year-old migrant mom who asked to only go by her first name, Maria. “There are some people who are kind, who bring out food and clothes and try to help. And there are some that, if you ride the bus, they curse at you, they cover up and start speaking English, which I don’t understand but I know what they’re saying.”

Father Dwayne Davis, pastor of the nearby St. Thomas Aquinas Church, said that his parish, along with others in the area, has been collecting coats and clothing donations for the migrants. They started after dozens of families showed up on their doorstep looking for help.

“Our response is the Christian response,” Davis said. “We stay away from politics … Regardless of whether we believe they should be there or not, the reality is that they’re here now.”

Davis emphasized that the church’s actions were simply an emergency response to the problem.

“I want to be clear that this is not political at all,” he said.

Desiree Frias, a mutual aid organizer, is outspoken about the need to move migrants families from the tents, which she called “not compatible with human life.” The Facebook groups are “very upsetting,” she said, but acknowledged an irony in the whole situation.

“They’re saying that they’re going to stop the migrants, but the migrants don’t want to be there either,” Frias said. “Surprisingly, we have a common struggle in that they don’t want them there and they don’t want to be there.”





https://www.yahoo.com/news/migrants-...213700494.html

Pass out flyers. They can go to their Consulate for their FREE trip back home.


Not one U.S. taxpayer dime should be paying for this or their litters of offspring. We are not the dumping ground for the world's overbreeding poverty, and they have NO right to be here, let alone this government taking our money to pay for this human trafficking.




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