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Scores of Migrants Removed from PS 188 in Coney Island as Parents Protest Temporary Shelter Plan
Edited by: TJVNews.com
By the end of Wednesday, scores of migrants were removed from the school gym at PS 188 in Coney Island after parents and other leaders registered strong objections to have them reside there in what was set up as a temporary asylum seeker shelter, the New York Post reported.
Sources told the Post that the asylum seeks would be relocated to an undisclosed location in Manhattan by the end of business on Wednesday.
Speaking to NY1.com on Wednesday morning, New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks confirmed that PS 188 in Coney Island was the only school where migrants had been moved in by the city. Also confirming the relocation of the migrants from the grounds of PS 188 was City Councilman Justin Brannan confirmed Wednesday. He announced the decision in a tweet, as was reported by NY1.com. “Plan is to no longer use this site for temporary shelter,” he tweeted. “Our schools should not be used for this purpose.”
“The plan is to make sure school gyms are not used as shelters,” City Councilman Ari Kagan told The Post soon after being alerted to the change in plans by NYC Emergency Management.
The gym where the migrants were housed was separate from the school, but on school grounds, as was reported by NY1.com.
It is unclear if the city will use any other public school gyms to house migrants. On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his administration was considering 20 public school gyms as potential emergency shelters for migrants. NY1 also reported that parents in Brooklyn had protested against the plan on Tuesday.
When asked about the plan to house migrants in gyms, and specifically about the decision to move migrants out of the P.S. 188 gym, Anne Williams-Isom, deputy mayor for health and human services, said the school sites were always planned as “respite,” or short-term, sites, NY1.com reported.
“The reason we had to do it was because of the influx that we’ve gotten,” she said, according to the NY1 report. “There was one day where we got over 900 people in one day. I’ve made, and the mayor has made, a commitment to not have anybody sleeping on the streets.” Williams-Isom disagreed with the notion that the city was “reversing strategy.”
“The strategy was to have emergency sites for short-term respite, which always meant that people would move to another site when that became available,” she said, as was reported by NY1.
Other school gyms throughout the city were also set up as temporary shelters for migrants and asylum seekers. The Post reported that outraged parents spent Monday to Wednesday protesting outside the Williamsburg schools, as well as PS 172 in Sunset Park, which was also set up with cots earlier this week.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the PS 172 gym was being cleared out Wednesday, the Post reported.
It also isn’t yet clear if the Adams administration’s abrupt reversal was due to the intense backlash from parents.
Attendance at PS 172 was down 42% on Wednesday as angry parents kept their kids home amid the heated debacle, the Post reported.
“If [the migrants] are not here by tomorrow, he can go back,” a mom named Rosie said of her second-grader, the Post reported. “But if they are here, he is not going back and I will fight the system to the end to get that off his record. Because it’s not our decision, this is their decision.”
A school safety officer at PS 17/MS 577 told The Post that dozens of green cots that had been erected inside the gym at the beginning of the week had already been taken down by Wednesday afternoon.
“All the cots are packed up and bagged up,” the officer said, adding they’ll be picked up by officials after the school day ends.
“The order is ‘dismantle and sanitize’ so the kids can go back in the gym,” the officer added. “It’s done. Finito.”
