Nearly 2,000 migrants are evacuated from the tent shelter in Brooklyn ahead of the storm

New York City on Tuesday evacuated about 500 families with children — nearly 2,000 people in all — from a massive tent shelter set up on an abandoned former airstrip in southern Brooklyn, ahead of heavy rains and winds expected to hit the area .

More than a dozen buses were lined up to take the migrants to James Madison High School, a few miles away, to spend the night. One family, wearing ponchos as the rain began pouring, described the scene inside the tent structure as chaotic and said they would stay with a friend instead of going to the school.

Edison Chavez, 38, and Valeria Lopez, 36, evacuated to the school with their two sons, 10-year-old Alan and 5-year-old Iker. They came to New York from Ecuador and have been living at Floyd Bennett Field since their arrival a month ago.

“They told me we had to evacuate because the tents might not be able to withstand the wind,” Mr. Chavez wrote in a text message in Spanish. “The last storm we were scared because it looked like the tents could have been blown away.”

“They were really loud, the metal in the tents,” he added.

Speaking to reporters in Albany earlier in the day, Mayor Eric Adams said migrants had been temporarily moved “out of an abundance of caution.”

“We want to make sure people are safe,” he said.

At a news conference in Manhattan, Zachary Iscol, the city’s emergency management commissioner, explained that the main reason for the evacuation was wind, although the agency was also “concerned about flooding in and around Jamaica Bay.”

Mr Iscol said that because the runway of the Floyd Bennett plane is a historical sitebuilding the tents with stakes in the ground was not allowed. He noted that the tents are located in a coastal area that is particularly prone to gusts of wind.

Mr. Chavez said the migrants were told they would sleep on the floor of the high school, where staff members would hand out blankets. He and his wife hurriedly packed their immigration papers, coats and clothes for their children, he said.

“Our children ask us why they brought us here, and we tell them because they have to repair the tents,” he said. “The life of a migrant is hard.”

The city has resorted to using tents to accommodate the influx of migrants over the past two years. About 70,000 people are currently living in homeless shelters, including tents and dozens of hotels. On Tuesday, the city evicted about 40 migrant families with children living in a Manhattan hotel after imposing a 60-day shelter-in-place limit late last year.

The city is required by law to provide shelter to anyone who requests a bed, and the families who have been evicted can reapply for a place.

Officials say migrant families living at Floyd Bennett Field are not yet at risk of deportation. They were transferred to James Madison High School when after-school programming ended at the school, a Department of Education spokeswoman said.

The migrants are scheduled to leave before classes start in the morning, but the high school will operate remotely on Wednesday, the spokeswoman added.

Luisbeli Mendoza, 24, stayed at the school with her husband, Carlos Quiroz, and their two children, ages 8 and 5. They arrived in the city a month ago after traveling from their home in Venezuela. She said they would sleep on chairs in the school auditorium and be returned to the tent shelter at 5 a.m. on Wednesday. She added that water entered the tent during an earlier storm and the family got wet.

‘We have just arrived and we are scared. We know nothing,” she said in a text message.

Wesley Parnell, Claire Fahy And Troy Closson reporting contributed.