New York City students shut out as school becomes migrant shelter over objections of parents and officials.
By Eileen Griffin
Students are told to vacate their classrooms to make space for illegal immigrants.
A New York City high school became home to nearly 2,000 illegal immigrant families, forcing the students at that school to take classes remotely, The Epoch Times reported.
James Madison High School in Brooklynn became the latest victim in the ongoing effort to find space for the overwhelming number of people arriving in American cities.
Those housed in a huge tent at Floyd Bennet Field were deemed to be in danger of increasingly cold winter weather. City officials decided to move the migrants into a more weather-resistant shelter.
Students were told to leave and were assigned to remote classes for an unspecified period of time. Migrants moved in as students were hustled out of the building.
New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov (R) said in a statement posted on X, “This is unacceptable. Our schools are not migrant shelters!”
“Our public schools are meant to be places of learning and growth for our children and were never intended to be shelters or facilities for emergency housing,” Vernikov said.
“To be clear: I don’t believe the migrants are to blame here,” Vernikov writes on X. @JoeBiden invited them in with open arms, and our city rolled out the red carpet for them by handing out free benefits like candy. Of course they’ll come here. It’s a social services paradise without prerequisites.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) blamed both the Biden administration and Mayor Eric Adams for the crisis as well, the New York Post reported.
“Now, because of the administration’s policy choices, students and teachers are having to turn to remote learning in order to accommodate illegal immigrants at their school,” Johnson told the Post. “From the president on down to city mayors, support for illegal immigration has trickled down, thereby prioritizing the needs of non-citizens over the needs of our own.
“If Biden and Mayorkas refuse to reverse course and secure the southern border, our students and schools will continue to pay the price for the administration’s abdication of duty,” said Johnson.
“It’s utterly unforgivable that thousands of James Madison HS students had their education disrupted when their Brooklyn school was closed to house nearly 2,000 migrants,” wrote the New York Post editorial board.
“Parents had every right to go ballistic: Their children’s education got sacrificed for the illegal migrants’ comfort,” stated the editorial.
“The least they can do is get creative: Since President Biden is the chief architect of the migrant crisis, demand that the federal government make some of its NYC buildings available for emergency shelter. Make the feds suffer, not the kids,” said the Post.
Daniel Di Martino, Manhattan Institute graduate fellow focused on immigration said in a statement, “America is and should be a welcoming nation to immigrants, but welcome should not come at the expense of American students.”
“It’s unacceptable that work-capable adult immigrants are receiving free shelter from the city, and it’s even more outrageous that New York students are going to miss in-person schooling because of the misguided policy of Right to Shelter. I only hope that the 60-day limit on shelter recently imposed by the mayor can finally end this crisis.”
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Michael Hartney also issued a statement.
“This is just the latest example of politicians sending the false message to American families that their child’s regular presence in school is non-essential,” Hartney said. “Is it any surprise that our schools have experienced unprecedented rates of chronic absenteeism since the pandemic? When adults signal to kids that attending school isn’t that important, they tend to listen.”
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