Outrage is growing in Brooklyn due to the southern border migrant crisis.
Migrants bused from Texas and staying at a shelter in the Marine Park neighborhood are begging for change on street corners and knocking on doors seeking food, clothes, and money, The City reported.
"We had a nice, close, neighborhood group of people. Now we have a literal invasion of people knocking on doors begging, asking for money," Marina Park resident David Fitzgerald, 62, told the outlet.
"There's a lot of retired people here, a lot of families here. They're at the stage of their lives where they like peace and quiet. This is the opposite. We're not liking what we see."
People in the Marina Park area, which voted for former President Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020, are commenting about the migrants in a Facebook group called "STOP FLOYD BENNETT ILLEGAL MIGRANTS," referring to the shelter's location.
Group administrator Bren Lee, 42, said she has removed people for saying things she thought were explicitly advocating violence. Nonetheless, she did not take action after one group member advised neighbors to "get your guns."
"I mean, 'Get your guns' is not advocating for violence. It's just saying, 'Be prepared, right?'" Lee told The City.
"We had 500 families there and nobody really saw any of them. But now that there's 1,700 people in there and they've noticed a big change in the neighborhood. A lot of people are concerned."
About 66,000 migrants living in shelters in New York City at the end of November, The City reported.
The Floyd Bennett Field shelter, currently housing around 1,700 migrant families, consists of four massive tents on an abandoned federal airfield.
Migrants have taken buses to schools and other destinations in Brooklyn and Queens.
"The optics are horrible," said former Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, who has rallied with neighbors against the shelters but also cautioned people against protesting at Floyd Bennett once migrants began living there.
"These are women and children who need to be cared for."
Last week, migrant families and their advocates marched outside New York's City Hall to demand that Mayor Eric Adams end his plan to limit the number of days newly arrived immigrants can remain in city-run shelters.
In October, Adams issued an order limiting homeless migrants and their children to 60 days in city housing.
Adams has traveled to Washington, D.C., 10 times seeking federal aid to help deal with the city's migrant crisis.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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