City Hall vowed to investigate reports of “lawlessness” Sunday following The Post’s investigation on spiking crime around the controversial Floyd Bennett Field shelter — while migrants housed at the site said troublemakers were giving other asylum-seekers a bad rep.
In a statement Sunday, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said the city would boot migrants who break the law out of tax-funded shelters.
“We will investigate any reports of lawlessness and ask anyone who is not obeying our code of conduct on site to leave,” the rep said.
It came in response to The Post’s exclusive report on Saturday that found shoplifting, panhandling and scams have plagued the Brooklyn communities around Floyd Bennett Field since nearly 2,000 asylum-seekers moved there.
According to NYPD data, theft, robbery and petit larceny all increased, in the 63rd Precinct, which includes the former federal airfield, between Nov. 27 and Jan. 7, the first several weeks of migrants being housed at the massive tent city.
Locals said some migrants have taken to prostitution, while others try to scam motorists by claiming they were hit by their vehicles and trying to extort up to $500 from them to let it go.
At least five migrants have been arrested at the makeshift shelter since its opening in mid-November, including a 20-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker charged with choking and beating his girlfriend, police records show.
Still, migrants at the facility on Sunday said the vast majority are simply trying to find a better life in the Big Apple and are staying on the straight and narrow — and that only a handful of bad apples are making trouble.
“Like everywhere else, there are always good people and bad people, and sometimes we all pay for the bad ones,” Fabian Vallas, a native of Ecuador now living at Floyd Bennett Field.
“Because those people are the ones who are making migrants look bad,” Vallas said. “We just want to get our papers and get a job, and also be independent. We don’t want to be another burden on the New York government.”
Another resident, Mexican migrant Juan Carlos Vasquez, who lives at the tent city with his wife, described life there as “tranquillo” — or calm.
“I’m a worker, I’m honest,” he said. “Those who steal put all of us in harm’s way — those [of us] who came here to earn an honest living.”
Andres Arrango, a cafeteria worker at the remote shelter said the vast majority of migrants residing there are “nice.”
“The people who do this, in practical terms, they’re alone,” added Luis Elfredo, a migrant from Venezuela.
“They don’t have children. They don’t have to think about a family.”
The City Hall spokesperson reiterated the Adams administration’s calls for the federal government to pitch in and help deal with the crisis.
“It is understandable that New Yorkers are weary from bearing the brunt of all of this as the city continues to not receive the meaningful support it needs,” the statement said, adding that “the system is breaking” as a result of the overwhelming number of new arrivals.
Adams has repeatedly called on the White House to do its share to deal with the crisis.
More than 165,000 migrants from the US-Mexico border have flocked to New York City since the spring of 2022, with nearly 70,000 still fed and housed in city hotels and shelters.
It was the Biden administration that signed off on the use of the federal site for migrants.
Floyd Bennett Field is one of three massive tent sites erected to deal with the influx, with the others being Randall’s Island in Manhattan and the former Creedmoor Psychiatric Center site in Queens.
The former Brooklyn airfield was the subject of harsh criticism before the tent was even raised, with detractors complaining that the desolate site was ill-suited to house migrant families.
Last week, the city abruptly evacuated the shelter amid fear that a dangerous storm approaching the site could topple the massive tent — sparking a new round of outrage when 1,900 migrants were forced to hole up in an active public high school five miles away.
The move outraged parents, whose children were forced to have remote classes the next day.
Those migrants, meanwhile, were crowded into a second-floor gym for several hours before being bused back to Floyd Bennett Field in the middle of the night after just a few hours.
