Migrant families slept on floors, chairs at school amid NYC storm before pre-dawn return to Floyd Bennett Field

Hundreds of migrant families with children had to sleep on floors and chairs at a southern Brooklyn high school Tuesday night after being evacuated from their tent-style shelter at Floyd Bennett Field due to a dire storm forecast, according to city officials.

A Department of Education memo obtained by the Daily News said there would be “cots and supplies available” at James Madison High School in Midwood, where roughly 1,900 migrants spent the night after the Adams administration determined it wasn’t safe for them to stay at the Floyd Bennett Field shelter amid the heavy rainstorm.

But a photo released by City Hall showed some migrant families with kids sleeping on the floor of James Madison’s gym.

While an Adams spokeswoman wouldn’t say what happened to the cots referenced in the Department of Education memo, Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol and NYC Health+Hospitals official Dr. Ted Long confirmed in a briefing Wednesday that migrants were only offered blankets and sheets to sleep on at the school.

Long conceded the school was “not going to be comfortable” as sleeping quarters, but called the relocation from Floyd Bennett Field “a success.”

“We made sure everyone was safe throughout the night,” he said.

Carolina Contreras, a Venezuelan migrant who was bused late Tuesday to James Madison with her husband and two kids, told The News that families slept on floors all over the school.

“Everyone was looking for a little corner to put down the sheets and lay down. We had to sleep on the floor,” said Contreras, whose kids are 9 and 11.

According to Iscol, all the migrants who spent the night at James Madison were returned to the Floyd Bennett Field shelters by 4:15 a.m. Wednesday.

“They woke us up at 1 [a.m.], and brought us back shortly after,” said Contreras, 36.

Still, James Madison’s roughly 3,800 students were on fully remote schedules Wednesday, according to Adams’ spokeswoman. The spokeswoman said classes were kept remote at the request of James Madison’s principal, Jodie Cohen, who asked for it after Adams’ administration decided to house migrants at the school amid the storm.

In a Tuesday night Zoom meeting with parents, teachers and local residents, Cohen urged families to “blame her” for the decision to go remote, according to a person on the call.

“Parents were very upset they were not asked,” the person said.

Iscol said in the briefing that James Madison received “a torrent of hate calls and even a bomb threat” amid the migrant relocation initiative.

“These actions are not only deplorable, but they are also criminal offenses,” he said, adding that the NYPD is investigating the matter.

After getting back to Floyd Bennett Field before sunrise, Contreras said she didn’t send her kids to school Wednesday because “we didn’t sleep all night.”

“We put two sheets on the floor and we lay down,” she said. “The kids spent all night wide awake. … It was so uncomfortable.”

Tuesday night’s storm caused 61 mph winds across the city and dumped upward of 3 inches of rain, according to the Emergency Management agency.

Amid those conditions, Adams’ administration decided it wasn’t safe to keep migrants housed in the tent-style shelters at Floyd Bennett Field, which is located in a flood zone.

The decision to move the migrants to James Madison stoked intense pushback from voices across the political spectrum.

Brooklyn Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Republican, lamented on X that James Madison students were “punished and forced to bear the brunt of the migrant crisis” by having to switch to remote schooling on short notice.

Meantime, migrant advocates and progressive politicians, including city Comptroller Brad Lander, said the relocation effort showed why Floyd Bennett Field shouldn’t be used as the site for a migrant shelter at all, given the flood-prone nature of the location.

New York Immigration Coalition Executive Director Murad Awawdeh, whose group has helped welcome migrants to the city since 2022, said the decision to house families with kids in a congregate setting like a school without beds violates the city’s right-to-shelter mandate.

“This was incredibly not allowed,” Awawdeh said. “This is why the guidelines and procedures are actually written the way they are — to avoid situations like this happening.”

City officials have been in court for months seeking permission from a judge to suspend the right to shelter amid the migrant crisis.

In Wednesday’s briefing, Long acknowledged Floyd Bennett Field is “not an ideal place” for a shelter, but reiterated Adams’ argument that the city’s out of appropriate places to house migrants.

Another winter storm could hit the city next week.

In the event that Floyd Bennett Field needs to be evacuated again, Iscol said the city won’t use James Madison as a temporary shelter.

“We are making alternative plans,” he said. He did not elaborate on those plans.

According to the latest data from Adams’ office, the city’s providing shelter and services for nearly 70,000 migrants, most of whom fled poverty and violence in Latin America in hopes of claiming asylum in the U.S. To date, the city has spent more than $3 billion on the crisis, prompting Adams to enact budget cuts across all municipal agencies that he says are necessary to offset the migrant-related spending.