Testimony by the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG)
before the NYC Council Committee on Immigration regarding:
Preliminary Budget Hearing –Immigration
March 26, 2018
Chair Menchaca, Council Members, and staff, good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Immigration Committee about the FY19 budget. My name is Lauren M. Reiff, and I am a Supervising Attorney at theNew York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG).NYLAG uses the power of the law to help New Yorkers in need combat social and economic injustice. We address emerging and urgent legal needs with comprehensive, free civil legal services, impact litigation, policy advocacy, and community education. NYLAG serves immigrants, seniors, the homebound, families facing foreclosure, renters facing eviction, low-income consumers, those in need of government assistance, children in need of special education, domestic violence victims, persons with disabilities, patients with chronic illness or disease, low-wage workers, low-income members of the LGBTQ community, Holocaust survivors, veterans, as well as others in need of free legal services.
We appreciate the opportunity to testify to the Immigration Committee regarding the FY19 budget.With a new emphasis on impeding immigration and discouraging immigrantson the federal level, it is more important this year than ever for the City Council and the Mayor’s Administration to ensure that the budget provides critical services to low-income immigrant New Yorkers.
The New Immigration Landscape
We are now more than one year into the Trump Administration, which has made good on its campaign promises to ramp up immigration enforcement campaigns and make it more difficult for immigrants to reside safely and lawfully in the United States. In New York City, new federalactions have had a profound effect on the lives of millions of immigrants, many undocumented.Reports of increased immigration enforcement tactics and rumors of changes in eligibility and requirements for affirmative applications have led to widespread fear in New York City’s robust and vibrant immigrant communities. The cancellation of important temporary humanitarian forms of relief including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for citizens of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Haiti will make tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are currently in legal status undocumented in the near future. Immigrants who have lived peacefully in New York City for decades are terrified that theywill face deportation and be torn from their families because of rapidly changing policies and regular threats of additional changes coming directly from the President and the Department of Justice. The chilling effect of the policies that are being implemented by the new Administration will continue to have an enormous impact on the lives of immigrant families, and many are seeking legal services to understand their rights, determine whether they have a viable path to status, and plan for the safety of their families.
Unfortunately, in addition to actions taken by the Presidential Administration to target immigrants themselves, it is alsopublically attempting to vilify service providers who assist low-income immigrants in their immigration cases.With the federal government exhibiting blatant hostility towards immigrants and legal service providers, immigration legal services must be a priority for the City’s FY19 budget. New York City has always been a leader in the provision of significant and sustained funding for free legal services for immigrants. Immigration legal services keep families together, and allow those with a potential path to citizenship to live in the United States safely and free of constant fear. With a large immigrant population so integral to the fabric of New York City’s community, it is vital that the Council continue and expand its support for its residents in need of immigration services.
Immigration Legal Services in New York City
NYLAG is proud to partner with the City Council and several City agencies – the Human Resources Administration, the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, the Department of Youth & Community Development, and NYC Health + Hospitals – to provide legal services to New York City’s immigrant population. Through its City-funded immigration work, NYLAG uses its unique community model to integrate itself into communities, gaining the trust of potential clients through close partnerships with local community-based organizations, hospitals, libraries, schools, and other entities.
As part of the City Council’s Key to the City Initiative, NYLAG screens hundreds of immigrants in their own communities each year.Despite a significant rise in the level of fear in immigrant communities, we are pleased to report that immigrants have continued to come to Key to the City legal clinics in large numbers, which we believe is due to the events being located within immigrant communities and run in concert with trusted organizations, including the City Council and the New York Immigration Coalition.Large-scale clinics such as Key to the City are vital to ensure that as many people as possible are screened for potential relief. But, screening is most useful when providers are then able to assist in applications for relief. NYLAG is grateful to the City Council for its continued support of immigration legal services through critical pots of funding, such as the Immigrant Opportunities Initiative. NYLAG is proud to be a partner in this initiative, which designates necessary funding that allows us to provide a range of services to immigrants in need. NYLAG is also honored to part of the Mayor’s Administration expansion of the initiative, which will give us capacity to take on more of the complex cases that we see at Key to the City events and through our partner agencies for full representation.
The ActionNYC and NYCitizenship programs, both run through the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, have allowed NYLAG to expand its community model even further by allowing us to place immigration attorneys at community-based organizations in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, and at public libraries in all five boroughs. When immigrants have the option of receiving quality legal services in their own neighborhoods, they are more likely to seek them out.
Over the past several years, both the City Council and the Mayor’s Administration haverecognized the importance of funding legal services for immigrants in the healthcare setting. Through the ActionNYC in NYC Health + Hospitals program funded by the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, NYLAG assists immigrants with chronic and serious health needs obtain immigration status in order to acquire the health insurance they need. This program has allowed us to open new clinics at three H+H facilities, Lincoln in the Bronx, Elmhurst in Queens, and Gouverneur in Manhattan. By providing services that allow immigrants to achieve PRUCOL status, NYLAG has greatly expanded the pool of immigrants whohave submitted applications for immigration status and have also gained access to needed healthcare. Undocumented immigrants who may not otherwise contact an immigration attorney are introduced to NYLAG through a trusted doctor or other medical professional.
NYLAG applauds the City for understanding the need for community-based immigration legal services, and encourages the City Council and the Mayor’s Administration to consider the importance of serving immigrants in their own communities in any funding model.
Immigration Legal Services Needs Going Forward
The City has substantially increased funding of legal services over the last several years, and NYLAG is grateful that building immigration legal services programs has been a focus for both the City Council and the Mayor’s Administration.With the federal Administration taking an actively hostile position on immigrants and promising to deport millions, the infrastructure of knowledgeable and skilled legal services providers needs to be fortified and expanded now to ensure that we are able to provide services to those whose cases are most complicated.
Expanding capacity to take complex cases not in removal
Thecurrent spotlight on immigration has led to a substantial increase in the number of people that NYLAG sees who may have options for immigration relief, but who have complex immigration histories that need to be carefully reviewed and addressed. These cases are likely to take several years and substantial effort and advocacy on the part of legal service providers. Increased funding is needed immediately to support complex affirmative immigration legal work for clients who are not currently in removal proceedings, but who are at substantial risk. While NYLAG is a proud partner in programs such as ActionNYC and NYCitizenship, these programs only allow a limited scope of services, many of which are more “straightforward” case types, such as naturalization.There is no question that there are thousands of immigrants in New York City who require legal services in order to naturalize and receive themyriad benefits of doing so, including the critical right to vote, but we know that the area of most rapidly increasing and urgent need in this time of crisis is in complex case work.
Types of cases that are complex and resource intensive, but not necessarily in removal proceedings,include asylum for those who will be persecuted for returning to their home countries, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) for children abandoned or neglected by a parent, U and T Visas for crime and trafficking victims, and Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) self-petitions for victims of domestic violence. Certain populations are far more vulnerable now in light of the Administration’s enforcement priorities. Undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States for less than two years are subject to expedited removal; these cases must be handled quickly and with extreme care, as these individuals have limited due process rights in the event that they come into contact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Since the election, NYLAG has also seen a sharp uptick in the number of vulnerable clients who need assistance to file time sensitive affirmative asylum applications to meet the one year filing deadline. Notably, many applications that were once considered straightforward have in recent months become complicated with increasing regularity. For example, NYLAG has a met with an immigrant who applied for naturalization, but whose application was denied. She had no complications in her history. The reason for the denial was that the person who signed her affidavit of support when she applied for permanent residence misstated the number of dependents they had. She is now in removal proceedings, through no fault of her own.
For complex affirmative cases, having representation can mean the difference betweengetting relief with USCIS and having to defend their case in removal proceedings before an Immigration Judge. If NYLAG can catch these clients before they are put in removal proceedings, there is a much greater chance that they will obtain immigration relief.
In FY18, NYLAG has been able to accept many of these cases under the Administration’s Immigrant Opportunities Initiative expansion, which allows for a much more extensive range of case types than some of the more narrowly focused programs, and is explicitly intended to support work on complex cases. The program provides a case rate of approximately $1,200 for more “straightforward” cases and$2,400 for more complex cases. However, we have been made aware that the program will be focused almost exclusively on cases in removal proceedings in FY19, which means that we will once again be unable to meet the demand for work on complex cases that are not in removal proceedings.NYLAG hopes that the Council will understand the urgency of these cases andmake available additional funding to support this necessary and important work.
Expanding capacity to assist immigrants in removal, but not in detention
NYLAG has seen a substantial increase in the number of clients requiring defense in removal proceedings. This includes both clients with final orders of removal who require urgent defensive action to prevent deportation, and clients in active proceedings without a final disposition. NYLAG is expecting the number of clientsin both categories to continue rising as current temporary forms of relief such as DACA and TPS expire and as immigration enforcement tactics become more aggressive. Without increased access to legal representation, these vulnerable individuals are at an even greater risk of falling prey to notarios and immigration scams. For example, NYLAG was recently retained by a client who hired an unauthorized non-attorney immigration practitioner to obtain a work permit for her. She was told that she qualified to obtain a temporary work permit because her mother had applied for naturalization, and would sponsor her upon becoming a citizen. She later learned that the application filed on her behalf was based on alleged abuse by her stepfather, which had been fabricated by her representative. She is now in removal proceedings. NYLAG is representing her to help her keep her family together.
We expect to see sharp increases in the number of complex cases in removal proceedings the near future as immigrants come out of the shadows and look for potential relief in the face of amplified enforcement, rhetoric, and budget cuts, and the outright cancellation of programs that have allowed immigrants to reside in the United States lawfully to date. Increased and specifically designated funding for removal defense in the FY19 New York City budget will give service providers the ability to take on more of those cases. A typical case in removal proceedings requires hundreds of hours of workover the course of many years. Because of the resource intensive nature of these cases,NYLAG currently turns away hundreds of immigrants with potential relief in removal proceedings each year due to lack of capacity. While New York City has a strong immigration legal services infrastructure, there is simply not enough capacity to handle the number of cases in removal proceedings in a City with such large immigrant communities, especially anticipating the increase in cases before the immigration courts over the coming months and years due to increased enforcement.
We recognize and applaud the resources that the Council has already made available to serve immigrants in removal proceedings. The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project is a ground-breaking program that makes resources available to immigrants in detention. NYLAG understands that the expanded Immigrant Opportunities Initiative will also be focused on immigrants in removal proceedings beginning in FY19. However, the Immigrant Opportunities Initiative was designed to support complex cases not in removal, and does not adequately serve the needs of immigrants in removal. For example, it limits annual reenrollments to 20% after the first year, even though removal proceedings are unlikely to be completed in less than four years and require active preparation by attorneys throughout the duration of the case.We hope that the Council will consider establishing a separate program to fund work on behalf of immigrants in removal who are not in detention, that address the particular needs of those cases.
Eliminating the prohibition on representing immigrants with certain criminal convictions
We also hope that the City will reconsider its restriction on assisting New Yorkers with certain criminal convictions, which impedes our ability to accept clients from the most marginalized communities in New York City who have meritorious claims and an exceptionally important need for service from trained professionals. Language prohibiting the acceptance of meritorious cases if certain criminal convictions exist has been included in all of our City contracts for legal services to immigrants, so we are now contractually prohibited from accepting cases where there are convictions for certain crimes, but have not been provided guidance on how to establish whether a case is subject to the prohibition or not. Nevertheless, over the past few months our organization has been faced with the prospect of turning away clients who are eligible for immigration relief and have compelling cases to present, but whose cases we cannot accept under city funding because of their criminal conviction history. This contradicts New York City’s stated objective to help all immigrants in need in a non-discriminatory manner, further discourages the most marginalized New Yorkers from seeking needed assistance from ethical and well-trained service providers, and puts significant and unnecessary burden on service providers.
Often, our staff is unaware of these convictions until after substantial work has already been done. In all cases, the immigrants in question have already complied with the sentence that the criminal court deemed appropriate to the crime, and in some cases decades have passed without a single additional conviction. In many cases, the circumstances surrounding the crime in question are extremely sympathetic. For example, a NYLAG attorney recently consulted with an immigrant who was convicted for attempted murder. This person had suffered a traumatic brain injury during his U.S. military service, and this causes him to suffer from emotional imbalance. He served his sentence and is now receiving treatment for his injuries. He has had no arrests since that time. However, we cannot accept his case under City funding because of his criminal conviction, and it can be difficult to find private funding for these types of complex immigration cases. NYLAG feels strongly that people like this are the most in need of our assistance.