Queens pols sue over plan to bring migrant shelter to Floyd Bennett Field
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Floyd Bennett Field, the site of a proposed migrant shelter. This week, a number of local elected officials from Queens and Brooklyn filed an injunction in court, looking to halt the plan. AP file photo by Chris Hawley
By Ryan Schwach
An injunction has been filed by Queens and Brooklyn electeds and residents against a planned migrant shelter at Floyd Bennett Field in South Brooklyn.
Republican Queens Councilmember Joann Ariola, as well as Democratic Assemblymembers Stacey Pheffer Amato and Jamie Williams filed the injunction just after midnight on Tuesday along with a group of city electeds and community members opposing the potential migrant shelter arguing it will cause a burden to the community and is an illegal use if the federal land.
The 48-page injunction, filed in Richmond County court, details the petitioner’s grievances, which include that the placement of migrants at the area will put a strain on nearby communities like the Rockaways, and goes against what the land is legally designed to do.
"Today's injunction sends a clear message to all those seeking to turn Floyd Bennett Field into a migrant base camp: we will not sit idly by and allow you to destroy our city. We will fight," said Ariola in a Tuesday statement.
"New York City has had more than its fair share from this migrant crisis,” she added. “More than 100,000 people have passed through this city in the last year alone, and unless something is done, another 100,000 are sure to follow. It's time for our government to close the border and end this crisis. Until then, we will make it clear that our national parkland is not to be used as a shelter space."
Ariola had previously said that she and others would “fully wage war” on Governor Kathy Hochul and President Joe Biden in order to stop shelters like the one planned for Floyd Bennett Field.
The use of Floyd Bennett Field as a shelter site similar to the one already up and running at Creedmoor in Queens Village was announced officially by Hochul on Aug. 21. The site required federal approval to allow the state to use the historic former naval air station just north of the Rockaway peninsula for a migrant shelter.
“After months of negotiations, the Biden Administration has provided us with a tentative contract that would allow New York to utilize Floyd Bennett Field as a shelter for asylum seekers,” Hochul said in August. “Once the final agreement is signed, we will work with Mayor [Eric] Adams and his team to set up a Humanitarian Emergency Relief and Response Center at Floyd Bennett Field with the capacity to shelter more than 2,000 asylum seekers.”
Officials against the plan have cited that the plan would house up to 7,500 migrants, rather than 2,000 which the governor stated in August. The petitioners cite a comment from Adams’ Chief of Staff Joseph Varlack, who said in August that the administration thinks “the footprint really needs to be more like 7,500.”
However, there is currently no confirmation on the increased number of beds in the proposed shelter.
Opposition to the plan has come since its announcement, namely from Ariola and other electeds and community leaders from the Rockaways, which lies just over the Marine Parkway Bridge from Floyd Bennett Field.
"The placement of a migrant base camp at Floyd Bennett Field is illegal, and skirts around all of the protocols meant to keep this place a national park,” said Assemblymember Jamie Williams, who represents the Floyd Bennett area and other South Brooklyn communities like Marine Park and Canarsie. “This is land set aside for public recreation, not for housing, and I am confident that our injunction will right this wrong and ensure that Floyd Bennett Field remains as it was meant to be - a park space for people to enjoy, and not an illegal shelter space."
The petitioners on the injunction also include Republican elected officials from Staten Island like Councilmember Joe Borelli and Congressmember Nicole Malliotakis as well as other Brooklyn and Queens electeds like Councilmembers Vickie Paladino and Bob Holden.
The brunt of the petitioners’ argument is that the shelter would result in an “undue burden” financially on taxpayers, as well as government entities.
“The financial burden placed upon the State and City governments has the potential to make those governmental entities ‘go broke,’” the injunction reads. “More likely, however, is that the taxpayers, including the Plaintiffs herein will pay for this undue burden via higher taxes.”
The petition also argues that the shelter would put a strain on community services, like police, fire and sanitation.
“It will also serve to deprive the communities surrounding the intended shelter sites of vital services such as police, fire, sanitation, transportation, and healthcare by imposing a new and undue burden on the surrounding communities that have not been planned or budgeted for by Defendant City or Defendant State,” the petition reads.
The lawyer who filed the injunction is Republican litigator John Ciampoli, who recently represented Flushing City Council Candidate Yu-Ching James Pai in an election fraud case filed against him that was ultimately thrown out in court.
Ciampoli’s legal case for why the shelter’s construction should be halted comes from the creation of the Gateway National Recreation Area in 1972, the national park where Floyd Bennett Field resides.
“In creating Gateway National Recreation Area, Congress required that the Secretary of the Interior utilize his statutory authority to ‘… administer and protect the islands and waters within the Jamaica Bay Unit the primary aim of conserving the natural resources, fish, and wildlife located therein and shall permit no development or use of this area which is incompatible with this purpose’,” the injunction reads, continuing on to argue that housing migrants, or housing in general, is incompatible with the land’s intended use.
Queens City Councilmember Joann Ariola is one of several elected officials leading a legal fight against the plan to bring a migrant shelter to Floyd Bennett Field in Southern Brooklyn. File photo by William Alatriste/NYC Council Media Unit
“None of this is even remotely relates to housing migrants,” the legal filing says.
Ciampoli also argues that the shelter plan did not go under an environmental review process, which he argues is legally required.
Hochul’s office declined to comment citing their policy not to comment on ongoing litigation.
At an unrelated press conference on Tuesday morning, Adams was asked about the Floyd Bennett Field injunction.
“When people are upset, the first person they look for, they look for the mayor,” he said. “Listen, that's the nature of the beast. So, if they want to go to court and sue to stop us from doing the Floyd Bennett Field, they have the right to do so, but if we're not putting it in Floyd Bennett Field, we're going to put it somewhere. And so they said, ‘Don't put it in Floyd Bennett Field,’ then I can't...I don't want to hear them later saying, ‘Don't put it on my block.’”
“We have to put 116,000 people that are coming, 10,000 a month, we have to put it somewhere,” he added. “So, if the lawmakers are going to say, ‘Eric, we don't want it on Floyd Bennett Field’, which is away from homes, which is away from communities, away from schools, if they don't want it there, then they can't get upset when it goes inside their neighborhood and block.”
