Pols call for immigration legal services boost as Trump builds deportation anxiety
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Queens Assemblymember Catalina Cruz called on the state to boost funding for immigrant legal services as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office. Photo via Reed Dunlea/NYIRC
By Noah Powelson
As fears of what a second Donal Trump presidency could mean for immigrants across the country grow, New York elected officials are using that anxiety to revitalize support for expanded immigrant legal representation and funding.
Rallying in Foley Square in Manhattan on Tuesday, Queens Assemblymember Catalina Cruz stood alongside immigrant advocates and families calling on the state to pass the Access to Representation Act, which would guarantee a right to counsel for immigrants facing deportation. The assemblymember also called for $165 million in funding from the state for the Office for New Americans and the Education Department.
Cruz was joined by the Campaign for Access, Representation, and Equity for Immigrant Families coalition, which represents a hundred different organizations all advocating for the ARA act. The coalition is led by The Vera Institute of Justice, the New York Immigration Coalition and Immigrant ARC.
“New York is facing an unprecedented challenge as the incoming Trump administration prepares to implement policies rooted in cruelty and chaos, tearing families apart and destabilizing communities,” Cruz said. “This moment demands courage, and New York is ready to lead the way.”
Under current New York state law, immigrants facing deportation do not have a right to assigned counsel the same way other indigent populations do. Most immigrants at risk of deportation lose their case without effective legal representation, according to the New York Immigration Coalition. Those in need of representation have to scrounge for whatever services they can find, and Cruz said it’s common for immigrants to get defrauded out of their money during the search.
The ARA was first introduced in 2022. At the time, the coalition called for $55 million in funding to implement the legislation, but Cruz says that financial need has grown tremendously in the years since.
"There are parts of our state that don't have the capacity, even if we miraculously found the money today and gave it to them, for additional attorneys or even the space to make sure they can meet with their clients," Cruz said. “It made it very difficult to continue arguing for additional money when you don’t have the capacity. This is where the bills come in.”
Part of the $165 million, Cruz said, would go toward the Education Department to build long-term capacity projects to address a growing immigration population.
State Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Brad Hoylman Sigel is the Senate sponsor for the bill.
“As we approach a second Trump Administration we must stand ready to protect New York’s immigrant community from the attacks that the former president has already promised,” Hoylman-Sigal said. “The ARA will guarantee that all those in New York State facing legal challenges related to their immigration status have access to lawyers, which is not currently the case. Legal representation can quite literally determine if thousands of parents are separated from their children or not.
Attempts at similar legislation were made in the past, but none ultimately passed. Pressure from New York elected officials is much higher this time around, however, as president-elect Donald Trump has made promises to carry out a massive deportation campaign using the U.S. military.
“President-elect Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies threaten millions of New York families, risking devastating mass deportations and family separations that would harm communities and endanger New York’s future,” Shayna Kessler, director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Advancing Universal Representation Initiative, said. “This moment demands significant investments in legal services to protect families, strengthen communities, bolster the economy and uphold our values. As the nation looks to New York for leadership, our elected officials must act decisively and without hesitation.”
According to the Vera Institute of Justice, over 172,000 people are unrepresented in New York immigration courts, a number that has increased dramatically the past year as the state saw a surge of migrants.
The Vera Institute of Justice conducted a poll in 2020 that showed that 93 percent of New Yorkers “support government-funded attorneys for people in immigration court” and that the same percentage of people support access to attorneys for all people, including those in immigration court.
Adding another layer of complexity to the issue is New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has long been criticized by the organizations behind the coalition for his response to the migrant crisis. When asked at a press conference on Tuesday, just hours after the CARE coalition finished their rally, what he would do to protect immigrants, Adams did not say if he supported further investment in immigration legal services.
“Migrants, asylum seekers and others, they want to work, they want to participate in the American dream and we need to find a way for them to do that,” Adams said. “But we cannot ignore the fact that the American people have communicated to us loudly and clearly. We have a broken system they want to fix and we need to fix our immigration system. We need to secure our border and we need to make sure that whomever we parole into this country is going to have an opportunity to work in this country.”
When asked if Adams had met with Trump’s new border czar, Adams said he had reached out and was going to set up a conversation with him.
“And I made it clear that I'm not going to be warring with this administration,” Adams said. “I'm going to be working with this administration. President Trump is the president-elect and whomever he chooses to run his agencies, I'm looking forward to sit down and see how we better New York.”
