New York City officials are drawing up plans to close down the migrant shelter on Floyd Bennett Field amid concerns that the facility will attract the unwanted attention of the incoming administration under President-elect Donald Trump.
The shelter, a tent complex housing about 2,000 asylum seekers on a former airplane runway, is on federal land. City officials fear that Trump could cancel the lease the moment he takes power in January, or dispatch immigration officers to the shelter to round up noncitizens, the New York Times reported.
The city is currently determining where to potentially relocate the 500 families in the tent complex if officials close it before the inauguration of Trump, the paper said.
The plans for the shelter’s closure have not been finalized and remain fluid, but the existing agreement allows both the city or the federal government to exit the lease with relatively short notice, according to the Times.
