On Monday, immigration advocates testified before members of city council, recounting harms to immigrant New Yorkers following what they alleged was collaboration between New York City agencies and immigration agents.
One immigrant who was referenced was a recently arrived mother who had requested therapy services and instead was flagged to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by the city’s child welfare authority. Another was a father who was thrown into immigration detention after NYPD and ICE officers stormed his family’s apartment, guns drawn, according to testimony.
These and other similarly harrowing stories were presented to the city’s immigration committee as lawmakers weighed four bills meant to limit federal immigration enforcement in New York City and hold federal officials accountable.
The four bills discussed on deck included:
- The NYC Trust Act: Allows New Yorkers to sue the Department of Corrections for violating sanctuary law relating to immigration detainers.
- INT 1268: Requires signs to be placed which identify private areas of city property and also notifies immigrants of their rights when faced with immigration enforcement agents.
- The PEMDAS Act: Prohibits employers from using E-Verify to check a worker’s employment authorization status unless they have already been offered employment.
- The Safer Sanctuary Act: Bans federal immigration authorities from operating out of property run by the Department of Correction.
Since Donald Trump took office in January, multiple instances of potential collusion between the city’s agencies — from jails to police — and federal agents have caused concern amongst both the public and city officials. The latest example: Last week, the Department of Investigation released a report which found that the New York Police Department had colluded, both legally and illegally, with federal immigration authorities.
The threat of information sharing has caused New York’s immigrants to avoid essential city services, said multiple advocates and community members over the course of the roughly four-hour hearing. Reporting by Documented has shown that as ICE detentions have risen, immigrant organizations have seen a drop in participation at events and services.
Multiple directly-impacted New Yorkers didn’t come in person to share their above experiences, instead they sent their lawyers or advocates on their behalf to tell their story, because they were even scared of entering City Hall, said Rosa Cohen-Cruz, director of immigration policy at the Bronx Defenders.
City Council member Shahana Hanif railed against the impact that immigration enforcement has already had on the city, and the need to further insulate the city’s immigrants from harm.
“In just 11 months, we have seen federal immigration enforcement racially profile victims and use excessive force, actions that routinely violate immigrants rights undermine our democracy and erode the basic principles of due process,” said Hanif. “New York City is a city of immigrants, and our sanctuary laws exist to keep our communities safe, but too often those protections are ignored. We’ve seen city agencies unlawfully share information to federal immigration authorities with no training, no accountability, and right now, no enforcement mechanism when our laws are violated.”
While Immigration advocacy groups and electeds rallied in the cold and then packed City Hall chambers on Monday morning — even overflowing into the chambers’ balcony — city agencies were noticeably absent from proceedings. The only exception was Manuel Castro, director of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Castro testified, nearly three hours into the meeting and only in what he said was his personal capacity, then immediately left.
Multiple lawmakers and members of the public decried the city for turning its back to the hearing.
“Our mayor is downstairs, together with the NYPD commissioner and Manny Castro, the Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs,” said Yasmine Farhang of the Immigrant Defense Project. “They’re hosting a press conference — and you can’t make this up — it’s about language access for immigrant New Yorkers. So we collude with ICE, but we do it with language access.”
你知道吗？非公民办理驾照时的这个错误可能会导致选民欺诈
Also Read: Know Your Rights: ICE in Public Spaces, Subways and Streets
Earlier in the morning, immigration advocacy groups — representing immigrant communities from nearly every continent and making speeches in multiple languages — and electeds packed city hall steps in twenty-degree weather to call for council to pass the bills. Some went further, calling for the elimination of the city’s gang database.
“When we build systems like the gang database and like other systems that profile and racially profile and target New Yorkers, Black and brown New Yorkers specifically, for enforcement,” said MK Kaishian, a civil rights attorney. “We build a system where we can then hand the keys to a federal agency that absolutely will use it to perpetuate detention abuses that we’re seeing now.”
