Biden, Hochul Left Migrants 'Without A Life Raft': Brooklyn Electeds

BROOKLYN, NY — Brooklyn electeds on Tuesday pleaded — just days after Gov. Kathy Hochul's proposed plan to house migrants on vacant federal land in New York City seemingly took a step back.

Hochul on Monday told reporters she was still working to house a potential 2,000 people at Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field, a federally owned World War II-era naval air station made up of over 1,600 acres of land on Barren Island.

Federal officials have toured the facility and discussed the legal barriers and logistics — but they aren't too keen on the idea yet, Hochul said.

"Getting the federal government to change its position and to tell an agency, the Department of Interior, that they now have to accept migrants has been a complicated journey," Hochul said. "[But] I did not take away from that a hard no."

And across town just two days later, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and Mayor Eric Adams called on the private sector and federal agencies to provide funding and space for incoming migrants.

"President Biden and Governor Hochul have so far failed to galvanize the full weight of the Federal and State governments to ensure the humane treatment of new arrivals to New York City," said Adriene Holder, Chief Attorney of the Civil Practice at The Legal Aid Society.

The group particularly took aim at facilitating the use of vacant apartments in the city — something Reynoso has said could be done with legal intervention and emergency declarations at a city, state and federal level.

"Immigration is a national issue and must be met with a national solution," Reynoso said in May. "The people are not the crisis — the homelessness and our defunded city services are the crisis."

In Brooklyn, shelters opened last week in McCarren Park and Sunset Park — and across the city, nearly 100,000 asylum-seekers have arrived since spring 2022, according to Reynoso.

Reynoso said he even offered Borough Hall as a shelter migrants.

"[It's] promise that I stand ready to fulfill," he said. "But we cannot do it alone."

Additional propositions have long included Floyd Bennett Field — Hochul told New York 1 she pitched the idea to the federal government well over a year ago.

"That is not the only site we're looking at. It has been a priority of mine and the Mayor’s, but there are other federal sites that I've insisted that they look at to help us in what is an unprecedented humanitarian crisis of epic proportions," Hochul said Sunday.