New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced Monday that the state has reached a “tentative contract” with the Biden Administration to use Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field to house illegal migrants.
The deal, reached after months of negotiations, includes construction of a massive migrant shelter on the federally owned former navy airfield that is expected to house more than 2,000 migrants.
“We are feeling optimistic that in the near future, we’ll have a contract review in our hand for an opportunity to house upwards of 2,500 people at this time,” Hochul said Monday.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is currently in Jerusalem on a three-day visit to Israel, thanked Hochul in a statement for her administration’s offer to subsidize the site.
The airfield, which includes more than 1,000 acres, is currently part of the Gateway National Recreation Area in Brooklyn’s Marine Park neighborhood.
The governor said the state is providing $20 million to complete casework for the roughly 30,000 migrants currently housed in New York City shelters, to expedite their exit from the system.
Two other state-funded migrant shelters have also come online in the past week: one in Queens, in the parking lot of Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, and the other on Randall’s Island.
A new migrant shelter is also to be built in the Midland Beach section of Staten Island sparked protests this past Sunday, with several people arrested during the event, including Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa and Staten Island artist Scott LoBaido.
Local officials have announced that a former assisted living facility, Island Shores, is slated to become the new migrant shelter in the coming months.
