TESTIMONY
Anne Faucet Ambien on the Challenges and Legal Representation of Migrants at Floyd Bennett Field
3:12:22
·
5 min
Anne Faucet Ambien discusses the challenges faced by migrants at Floyd Bennett Field, emphasizing the poor management of mail and the struggle to secure legal representation for political asylum.
- Migrants at Floyd Bennett Field lack basic necessities like shoes, jackets, and medicines, which Anne’s organization attempts to provide.
- Mail at the field is unsorted and dumped, resulting in lost critical documents and issues in receiving important notifications.
- Anne shares her difficulties in contacting legal aid for migrants seeking political asylum, highlighting the lack of adequate legal representation.
- Environmental and human rights abuses in migrants' home regions exacerbate their challenges, as illustrated by a story from Ecuador.
- Council Member Diana I. Ayala acknowledges the significance of the mail issue and appreciates Anne’s efforts in providing assistance.
Anne Faucet
3:12:22
Others.
3:12:23
My name is Anne Faucet Ambien.
3:12:25
I'm a retired public interest attorney, and I'm a member of an organization in Bay Ridge that has been going out to Floyd Bennett Field.
3:12:33
At least once a week since December.
3:12:37
When we first, as you probably know, Floyd Bennett Field is four miles in either direction from anything, and there's no subways there, just the bus that runs down Flatbush Avenue.
3:12:49
In the beginning, in December, we were bringing shoes jackets because people didn't have them.
3:12:55
We've been asked for blankets and medicines because of children's the children being sick So we've been bringing children's tylenol and things like that.
3:13:06
People are really cold in the tents And so that's the blankets.
3:13:11
And then when the eviction started, we were asked for suitcases.
3:13:15
But I wanna talk about and we're Our access to being able to bring things there is being severely restricted, which I can tell you more about if you want to know.
3:13:26
But one of the things I haven't heard anybody talk about yet is mail.
3:13:31
And and I've met people from the Muslim community network doing work in the Bronx who told me that there people in this places that they're going to are having the same problem.
3:13:41
In Floyd Bennett Field, the male comes in a huge box and it's dumped on a table.
3:13:47
People cannot find their mail.
3:13:50
I talked to 5 women on February 10th who told me, well, their ID cards that they have to show when they go through the gate will register when something's been mailed.
3:14:03
So they told me that they were informed that on January 25th, Their IDNYC cards had been mailed.
3:14:11
And on February 10th, they had not received them, and they can't the mail isn't sorted.
3:14:16
It's in huge piles, so they don't know if it's been stolen by someone else.
3:14:22
One person told me she thought some of the guards were involved in bribery schemes for being able to get your mail, but when you add so people can't even go to a post office with there isn't one nearby, but they couldn't make arrangements to go to a post office to get mail because you need IDNYC to get it to be able to do that.
3:14:44
So the and then you you add in that 60 day evictions.
3:14:47
What's happening to people's mail?
3:14:49
People being dropped out of the system.
3:14:51
Those people are not getting mail.
3:14:53
So in addition to the lack of services that people are getting, they're missing you know, being able to get to 30 day meetings.
3:15:00
They're not getting any information about political asylum.
3:15:04
One woman When I took a photo, she had been given a list of four places that she would could allegedly call to get an attorney who would help her with a a political asylum case, and she said she couldn't get through to anyone.
3:15:18
I took a photo and called the 4 numbers myself.
3:15:22
And only was got a response from one agency, and I have the names, but she's right.
3:15:28
You know, I got recorded messages in some of them saying, you know, we'll call you back.
3:15:33
I never got a callback.
3:15:35
One of them said we may not call you back because of the volume of calls we received, and they never called me back.
3:15:40
Another one just had an automated voice thing that said, you've a message and I did and never got a callback.
3:15:48
And then the one place that I did get through after calling three times and it being busy told me that they only have a few countries where that they represent people in.
3:15:58
But as an attorney, I did political asylum cases in the nineties, and it's a very specialized field.
3:16:05
You cannot go into for a hearing and meet an attorney 30 days I mean, 30 minutes before you're hearing and have them able to represent you adequately because you have to have proof, you know, when you're talking about being persecuted as a member of, you know, what a protected group.
3:16:22
Under allegedly under New York I mean, under US law, you have to be able to establish the evidence of one kind or another from that region that you're from.
3:16:34
And I, one of the women I've talked to, walked to the border from Ecuador Her husband died in the Darien Gap.
3:16:44
She is Schwhar.
3:16:47
She's from a a a jungle region in Ecuador that has had a lot of problems with oil and mining extraction that have polluted the land and people are being killed if they protest because the water's polluted.
3:17:01
Those companies are no longer American.
3:17:03
They're nationalized under the Ecuadorian government, but nothing's changed in terms of what they're going through.
3:17:11
She had 2 little children, and that leads me to another issue, which I've heard from many people.
Diana I. Ayala
3:17:17
We need to move on.
Anne Faucet
3:17:18
Okay.
Diana I. Ayala
3:17:19
Experts in, but But I wanna thank you for that because I think you're absolutely right, and it's something that didn't come up.
3:17:25
The mail issue is is strictly important because people are getting, you know, very important notifications and that's being lost in in the transition.
3:17:36
So thank you for for highlighting that.
3:17:39
And thank you for your donations and your, you know, ability to to get in and out of the shelters to bring in goods to the families and eat them or the individuals and eat them.
Anne Faucet
3:17:50
Well, we're not being allowed in
Diana I. Ayala
3:17:51
any Yeah.