New York City officials last week defended their decision to temporarily move thousands of migrants from the Floyd Bennett Field tent shelter in Brooklyn to James Madison High School due to an anticipated damaging storm, CBS News reported.
The news of the temporary move was met with intense anger from local politicians and parents and created a firestorm on social media, with users accusing the city of forcing students out of classes in favor of illegal aliens.
The firestorm was so intense that the school even received threatening phone calls, including a bomb threat.
Parents and community leaders gathered at the high school on Tuesday, January 9 to protest the temporary move.
One parent told CBS News in New York that after what students endured during the pandemic lockdowns, it was “inexcusable” for the city to force children out of school.
The protesters argued that the school shouldn’t be used to house migrants even temporarily and said the tent shelter at Floyd Bennett Field on the shore of Jamaica Bay is a bad place to keep the migrants because it is vulnerable to bad weather.
According to the Associated Press, the outrage was overblown since the nearly 2,000 migrants only remained in the school for less than a day.
The city moved the migrants to James Madison High School on Tuesday, January 9. The school shifted to remote classes for Wednesday, January 10. All of the migrants were out of the school by Wednesday morning and in-person classes resumed the following day.
According to New York City officials, the migrants were taken by buses back to Floyd Bennett Field at 4:15 a.m. on January 10.
The city said James Madison High School would not be used to shelter migrants again.
However, Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol said the decision to move the migrants was done “out of an abundance of caution” to ensure that those living and working at the tent shelter were safe.
Iscol conceded that the city wasn’t happy about having the tent shelter at Floyd Bennet Field but said it was the only location officials from both the state and federal governments offered.
