Brooklyn parish serves migrants amid city crisis: ‘It’s about living the gospel’

The migrant crisis affects almost every other issue in New York City, including housing and crime. It takes up much of the attention of New York Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer who was elected on promises to tackle crime and disorder while maintaining progressive values.

New York is officially a sanctuary city with a policy that promises shelter to anyone who needs it. But that promise is becoming increasingly difficult to deliver with a growing migrant population and a native population seeking housing amid rising rents. The city recently imposed shelter restrictions, directly impacting adult migrants. Near the camp here, reports of migrants knocking on doors and begging for food and clothing have frightened some residents.

“While costs are driving #NYC residents away, the city is using your tax dollars to build more tents for migrants. We can’t afford this! We can’t keep this up. Why are our elected officials doing NOTHING?!” Curtis Sliwa tweeted on April 17. Sliwa, a radio talk show host, former Republican candidate for mayor and founder of the anti-crime unit Guardian Angels, is a leader of the opposition to the encampment here.

Sliwa was one of the keynote speakers at the “Topple the Tent” rallies held outside Floyd Bennett this winter that drew hundreds of local opponents. He labeled Adams the “mayor of illegal aliens” and raised the specter of terrorists and sex traffickers among the migrants.

But Nicolas and his fellow migrants have found a better welcome among some local Catholics, including those at St. Thomas Aquinas, a parish founded in 1885 to serve earlier generations of immigrants. Fr. Davis recalled that the Floyd Bennett Field camp was established before anyone in the parish knew of the plans. Last winter, dozens of migrants, many from more tropical climates who had traveled thousands of miles on foot across Central America, suddenly knocked on the church door seeking help.

“We didn’t have anything ready, but we knew we had to do something,” Davis told NCR. “It was a cold time. Migrants came here in shorts and T-shirts,” he said.

Davis founded the Matthew 25 ministry at the parish and provided clothing and other needs for the migrants, following Jesus’ biblical command to do the same. Once a week, migrants take the city bus to his church in search of necessary supplies. In the winter months the number reached hundreds. Now that the harsh weather has subsided, there are now several dozen.

Davis is an immigrant himself, having come to Queens with his family from Jamaica at the age of 12. He is sympathetic to the plight of the migrants, but acknowledges that their presence here is embroiled in the ongoing political immigration wars. Parishioners are divided. But, Davis said, “we had to give the Christian answer.” While the presence of the migrants was divisive, he noted: “They are already here.”

Raquel Florez, a recent graduate of Brooklyn College, is coordinating the parish’s response along with a dozen other volunteers, all women. They operate with little publicity about what they do, and they keep the once-a-week dress times known only to the migrants themselves.

“It’s kept very quiet,” she said. “There are people in our neighborhood who disagree. They put politics first instead of supporting people in need.” A neighbor’s house, she noted, has a prominent sign warning those ringing the doorbell looking for food to stay away.

The outreach to migrants at St. Thomas Aquinas goes beyond basic support. It includes presentations from lawyers from Catholic Charities and immigration workers, who provide advice and legal assistance to migrants seeking asylum.

A small group of locals are helping the migrants in other ways. The pop-up clothing booth is organized by three women with connections to Rockaway, a short walk across the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge from Floyd Bennett. Their project has no name. Gathering what they can from Rockaway residents, the trio shows up outside the gates of Floyd Bennett Field, near the bus stop, with loads of clothing and other goods that are quickly thrown away.

Sometimes the needs are shocking.

A member of the group saw a young Venezuelan woman, newly arrived in New York one winter, wearing only shorts and a T-shirt. The volunteer took her to her car, took off her pants herself and gave the clothes to the migrant, which offered some resistance to the winter cold. Laura Glabman, one of three volunteers, enlisted the support of the National Council of Jewish Women and thrift store contacts on Long Island to regularly fill two mini SUVs with materials that disperse quickly over the course of two hours.

Those who appear on the makeshift clothing site often come from Latin American countries, particularly Venezuela, while others come from Peru, Ecuador and Honduras. Others come from both Haiti and China. The middle-aged son of a Turkish woman translates for his mother, who says the family escaped persecution because they suffered as Christians in a Muslim country. They arrived in Mexico by plane and passed through the San Diego border crossing before coming to New York. Her husband will join them soon, she said.

Daero, from Venezuela, is on his way to an immigration hearing in Manhattan on his case scheduled for that afternoon. Darwin, from Ecuador, has been here for four months, after walking through Central America with his wife and three children before arriving in Texas.

While some in the neighborhood offer as much support to the migrants as they can, opposition to the migrants’ presence is louder and better organized. It also reflects the majority of local residents, said Joann Ariola, the city council member who represents Rockaway and neighboring communities in Queens. At packed community meetings, she has emphasized that while she sympathizes with the plight of the migrants, Floyd Bennett Field is not a good place for them.

“It’s not a good place to house anyone,” Ariola said.

She says the isolation means the migrants are far away from schools and shops. The field tends to be flooded, and during a winter rainstorm, migrants were forced to leave their tents for the night to seek shelter in a Brooklyn public high school as the water threatened their temporary homes. This move was described by Fox News as a national story as an indication that education for young citizens was being sacrificed to migrants.

And as summer approaches, other problems have come to light among local residents.

“People are afraid to use that park,” Ariola said, noting that the presence of migrants discourages locals from fishing off Jamaica Bay, paddle boating and using nearby soccer fields next to the field. She regularly hears from constituents in Rockaway, where the beaches are a magnet during the summer months, who say they are concerned that migrants will engage in illegal vending on the boardwalk — a favorite product is flavored ice cream — begging and perhaps stealing from residents and visitors.

The migrants will remain here at least through September, when the lease between the city and the National Parks Service expires.

What then? Ariola, one of six Republicans on the 51-member New York City Council, proposed moving the migrants to the Park Slope Armory, in affluent brownstone-liberal Brooklyn, whose representatives have expressed support for the migrants. The Adams administration, for its part, has remained quiet about what the future might hold, as the mayor lobbies for a more comprehensive federal role to address the migrant crisis.

Meanwhile, Floyd Bennett’s migrants shop at the pop-up clothing store, looking for necessities for their children, including shoes and coloring books. Also on the list maletas, suitcases. Even if they don’t realize the extent of the furor surrounding their presence, they are sure they will be on the road again.