Advocates and local volunteers rallied to support immigrant families housed in a giant tent encampment in southeast Brooklyn. In February, they shifted their focus after the shelter shut down. Discretion is paramount.
Piles of lovingly sorted coats, shoes in all sizes, and a rainbow of duffle bags and suitcases greet the visitor. Marjorie Nolivos shepherds two children, ages 10 and 15, through an assortment of T-shirts she senses would fit their vibe. Meanwhile, the kids’ parents inspect pieces of luggage, debating points of practicality. Is this bag big enough? Is this one too heavy? How are the wheels on this carryall?
One of the joys of shopping means finding—and picking—just the right thing. The best New York buying spree involves discovery and agency. That’s especially true for people scrambling to survive, like migrants not used to having the dignity of choice.
“The people who see our struggle and help are the good ones,” said one migrant father from Venezuela about volunteers like Nolivos. “They’re real neighbors. They understand we just want a better life for our families.”
But Nolivos wasn’t a sales clerk at a trendy Williamsburg boutique. The 28-year-old private equity analyst was volunteering for Floyd Bennett Field Neighbors, an impromptu group of folks from the area. And this retail haven tucked away on Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue cost customers nothing at all.
Floyd Bennett Field Neighbors came about to support the parents and children living at a now-closed migrant tent shelter in Floyd Bennett Field. The decommissioned airfield belongs to the Gateway National Recreation Area run by the National Park Service. Thus, it is federal parkland. Opened in August 2023, the tent shelter complex could accommodate up to 2,000 people at a time, or about 500 families, making it the biggest migrant family tent shelter in New York City.
Located at the edge of Brooklyn’s Marine Park neighborhood, the large, white tents sat on a former airfield, flanked by marshland, and miles away from necessities like public schools, retail shopping, and clinics and hospitals. Each family had its own space, a makeshift room separating it from the next family’s. People slept on cots and used the toilets and showers in facilities outside of the tents. High winds, flooding, and vermin ranging from rats to snakes all affected the area.
Then there was the matter of social isolation. The nearest homes were still a couple of miles from the shelter. Though many in the Marine Park community are immigrants or children of immigrants, the dominant ethnicities are Italian, Irish, Orthodox Jews of Eastern European descent, and Russian. Most Floyd Bennett families came from Latin America and spoke Spanish. Politically, the neighborhood is a red zone, with the majority of votes cast for President Donald Trump in the last election.
Once, the migrant families of Floyd Bennett Field regularly turned to Floyd Bennett Field Neighbors. The collective assisted parents and children living at the shelter with donations, advocacy, and social activities starting in December 2023. Since the city shut down the encampment in January, the families have moved to new shelters elsewhere in the five boroughs. And that has forced the Neighbors to reassess their role and how they can continue to help.
By Jan. 7, an Instagram story on the FBFN account announced that for the first time in more than a year, no shelter residents were spotted around the Q35 bus that picked them up for errands and took kids to school. The families had all moved out, a week ahead of the Jan. 15 deadline. In the wake, FBFN shifted its efforts.
Nolivos, a Brooklyn resident, organized donations at the Free Store in an off-site location called The Bridge Multicultural and Advocacy Project, a repurposed storefront for interfaith and secular communities in the clustered neighborhoods of Marine Park, Midwood, and Flatbush. On Jan. 11, soon after the shelter had closed, she assisted a family who needed outerwear for the blustering cold and luggage to fit their entire lives. Even after families had moved elsewhere, they faced a period of transition hard to navigate on their own. FBFN heeded the call.
Nolivos believes that the existence and needs of undocumented migrants “shouldn’t be politicized or as controversial as it is for some people.” As a first-generation Dominican and Ecuadorian born in the United States, she often thinks about how she could’ve been in a similarly challenging situation.
“That’s not much that separates you or differentiates you from anyone in that circumstance,” Nolivos explained about her desire to help. “The biggest thing that we have in common is that we’re all human and have the same basic needs.”
Still, FBFN knew that with the shelter closed, it had to adjust its operations. On Feb. 3, the coordinating committee met to discuss next steps. It stressed to its volunteers how important it was to continue the effort: “We recognize how, more than ever, staying in community is vital,” the group wrote in a messaging app to its members.
Since then, FBFN has been working on opening new satellite locations for its Free Store to sort donations, coordinate deliveries, and communicate with migrants in need. The FBFN is not a registered non-profit, so it fundraises via its fiscal sponsor Brooklyn Donates. On its website, Brooklyn Donates cites the shelter closure as an “incredible victory”—due to the isolated marshland location—but stresses that donations are still necessary to “support local mutual aid efforts providing resources to our new neighbors.”
According to city data shared in a Feb. 14 press release, fewer than 45,000 migrants were receiving city shelter services at that time, down from a high of close to 70,000 in late 2023. The release attributed the decline to the success of City Hall’s strategies—mainly, offering paid bus tickets to relocate people to other cities, limits on the time migrants could stay in shelters, and pushing for an expansion of work authorization. Yet not everyone agrees that Mayor Eric Adams fought as hard for migrants living in New York City as he could have.
In a Feb. 19 press conference with Columbia Journalism School students, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso blamed the Adams’ administration for not protecting and better providing for new immigrants. “I think this mayor has done a very poor job, and that’s exactly why we are a sanctuary city and why we’ve been one more for more than a decade,” he said.
Reynoso accused Adams of allegedly collaborating with President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda to get his corruption charges dropped (Adams has denied those accusations, as well as any wrongdoing in the criminal case against him).
“Should he want to fall in line, he’s going to have a very hard time over the next five months of this election cycle,” Reynoso said of Adams, who’s set to run for reelection despite the corruption charges. “Our diversity is what makes us stronger, what makes us special. And immigrants should be and are welcome here in the sanctuary city.”
Members of Floyd Bennett Field Neighbors agree. And they are scared.
“I am incredibly concerned about [the families’] safety and vulnerability in the new political climate,” said Maureen Keleher of Brooklyn, who began volunteering for FBFN in October 2024 but has recently scaled back her time. “I am concerned about the stability of their housing situations. I feel for the families with children who are trying to establish any sort of routine and normalcy for their children in an ever-changing situation. I hope everyday they get closer to seeking asylum despite the many obstacles.”
Christmastime became the breaking point for the Floyd Bennett families, most of whom came from Latin America. Rolling suitcases through half a mile of howling wind, muddy puddles, or snow is a feat under any circumstances. The task escalates from irritating to grim when it becomes a matter of survival. While other Brooklynites set up Christmas trees, menorahs, and other glittering holiday decorations, the migrant families of Floyd Bennett Field armed themselves with suitcases. Then they got rolling.
Once New York City announced the closure of its largest tent shelter on Dec. 10, 2024, the clock began ticking. More than 500 families had to leave by Jan. 15, and head to the Roosevelt Hotel processing center in Midtown for their next shelter assignment. From mid-December to early January, Floyd Bennett Field saw a mass exodus of Marys and Josephs seeking an inn.
Every family at Floyd Bennett had a different eviction date, some weeks later than others. During the move-out period, one father said that he and his wife had decided to move out of state to share a house with four other migrant families rather than try to navigate the city’s shelter system all over again. He had been making money as a contractor, which could cover rent.
“New York City announced the closure but didn’t provide families with enough information,” said Ariana Hellerman, a member of FBFN’s coordinating committee and a 43-year-old cultural producer living in Queens. While she had no experience in social work, she had spent years organizing artists and was fluent in Spanish.
“They needed to post signs in the tents. Suddenly, everyone was freaking out,” she explained, saying that the lack of signage added to the panic. “They thought, ‘There’s not going to be any room for me if I’m the last person to go.’”
The race to pack began. FBFN doubled down on its efforts to collect suitcases, even researching wholesale options to keep up with the demand. For a couple of weeks, a steady stream of families went back and forth between the shelter and the Q35 bus stop to acquire luggage and cold-weather clothing, and leave. A solemn march of people clutched blankets, bags, and wherewithal. “We need this help,” said one father. “We can’t do everything ourselves.”
The Neighbors had long pushed to close the encampment, on the grounds that living conditions were terrible, if not inhumane. But with pressure from advocates, the city shut it down for another reason: the fear that families living on this federal land could face deportation raids ordered by the Trump administration.
Hellerman said that the Floyd Bennett shelter closing happened much later than advocates wanted: By December, it was cold and approaching the holidays. She recalled more than a year earlier, in November 2023, when, as a Rockaway resident, she was riding the Q35 bus and saw migrant families dressed in tank tops and flip flops.
“Obviously seeing people dressed like that in New York City winter is very disturbing,” she said. When she started collecting clothing from her networks and distributing them outside the shelter, she soon encountered other women doing something similar. They began collaborating and kickstarted their first mass distribution of clothing in December 2023. A WhatsApp group swelled to a volunteer base of 200 people from Brooklyn and Queens.
The collective included the word “neighbors” in the name to appear welcoming. They didn’t simply focus on connecting migrant families to material resources, either. In Summer 2023, they created a “joy guide” to give to families so they would know how to access New York City pools and beaches for free fun.
Camila Morales, a 45-year-old artist and educator who co-runs the Buena Onda collective in Rockaway Beach, Queens with Dominika Ksel, found out about FBFN by word of mouth a couple of months after the group formed. She began following FBFN on Instagram, and donated a few household items. “I was impressed by how quickly they mobilized,” she said. “It showed that we can mobilize pretty quickly when there’s no support and we see the human need.”
Fast forward to the shelter’s hectic shutdown period a year later. Even people not going through the official channels of FBFN, which had strict protocols to source donations and protect family privacy, dropped off bounties near the site: pots, pans, even Little League trophies, which were quickly snatched up by children. “People want to help,” said one migrant mother. “It’s Christmas.”
FBFN tried to make the most of the holiday season, organizing a Christmas celebration with live Venezuelan music for the families at their Free Store. The Neighbors handed out toys, winter clothing, and the much-desired suitcases for the sudden move. On Dec. 16 alone, they were able to hand out 124 suitcases.
“It wasn’t just about the clothing,” said Hellerman. “It was about joy and culture.”
Since then, many volunteers have had difficulty remaining in touch with some migrants, who have changed cell numbers, not paid their phone bills, or simply want to remain cautious.
“It’s kind of impossible to know that you’re potentially never going to see these people again,” lamented Vivian Gomez, a 31-year-old Queens resident who spent two months volunteering for FBFN. “They might be separated from each other. They might have a fear of going to school and finding work.”
But at least in the new shelter placements, off federal land, the families enjoy a certain level of security from Trump-ordered raids, said Stephanie Rudolph, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society who has worked with families who lived at Floyd Bennett.
“The shelters are not supposed to let in ICE unless there is a warrant for a specific individual or unless the officers are in hot pursuit of someone who just committed a crime,” she said.
Nonetheless, the FBFN has become far more discreet, fearing crackdowns on its members. One former volunteer declined to be named because “I don’t necessarily want to be associated with this work under this administration.”
Still, the FBFN WhatsApp group remains open for the families who need a friendly neighbor.
Christine Stoddard is a writer, filmmaker, and multimedia journalist named one of Brooklyn Magazine’s Top 50 Most Fascinating People. Her work has appeared in Bustle, Cosmopolitan, Yes! Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Marie Claire, Teen Vogue, and beyond. She is a 2025 graduate of Columbia Journalism School.
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