Housing Migrants at NYC’s Floyd Bennett Field Stands for Now, Judge Rules

NEW YORK (Daily News/TNS) — The elected officials behind a legal push to block Mayor Eric Adams’ administration from housing migrants at Floyd Bennett Field voiced outrage Wednesday after learning their court challenge had been quietly dismissed a week earlier.

Court records show Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Peter Paul Sweeney ruled against Republican Queens City Councilwoman Joann Ariola and Brooklyn Democratic Assemblywoman Jaime Williams on March 6, but the same court database still does not include the documents that would likely include Sweeney’s legal opinion for doing so.

Ariola and Williams filed a lawsuit last year seeking to block Adams from housing migrants at the former Brooklyn airfield, contending that the site is prone to flooding and too dangerous. On Wednesday, they slammed Sweeney for his decision — and what they view as a lack of transparency.

“I am appalled by Judge Sweeney’s decision to dismiss our case, and disgusted to learn that he did so without notifying either party or the public,” Williams said in a written statement Wednesday. “We would love to know why he feels it is prudent to place 2,000 human beings in a flood zone in the middle of a National Recreation Area. This is a disgrace and an insult to every taxpaying citizen [who] resides in the area around Floyd Bennett Field, and a disservice to the people who are being forced to live in this compound.”

For nearly the entirety of Adams’ time in office, he and his administration have struggled mightily to house the more than 180,000 migrants who’ve flooded into the five boroughs. The crisis has caused the city’s homeless population to explode and has cost taxpayers billions of dollars to address.

With shelters bursting at the seams, Adams has had to get creative in housing the migrants, which led him last September to announce that the city had entered into a lease agreement with the federal government to use Floyd Bennett Field, with the city subsequently erecting several shelters and the state covering the tab.

The initial announcement almost immediately resulted in backlash, with many elected officials and advocates warning that the location was a recipe for disaster given its proximity to Jamaica Bay and an evacuation route. It also led to the lawsuit from Ariola and Williams.

“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,” Ariola said at the time. “We will fight.”

President Biden’s administration, which Adams has criticized for months for what he sees as its poor response to the migrant crisis, granted the city permission to use Floyd Bennett last August in a deal that Gov. Kathy Hochul helped get to the finish line.

“It’s not ideal, but we are doing the best we can with what they’ve given us,” Adams’ Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol said just prior to migrants moving into the airfield.

Whether Justice Sweeney’s court decision from last week will ultimately stand is unclear. John Ciampoli, the lawyer representing Williams and Ariola, said Wednesday they want to appeal, but he won’t know if they will until he sees the decision itself. He said typically the parties to a lawsuit are notified directly by the court once a decision is rendered, but that didn’t happen in this case. Instead, he found out by checking the court records online.

“I can’t help but think that it’s wrong,” he said of the decision. “But I haven’t read it so I don’t know.”

Ariola demanded Wednesday that Sweeney “publish the memorandum explaining exactly why he has decided this way.”

“We will continue to do what we can to push for an immediate closure of the tent complex at Floyd Bennett Field,” she said.

It’s unclear why the documents have not been made publicly available. A woman at the judge’s chambers said the documents aren’t in his office and have been sent to the clerk.