Electeds and legal advocates call on mayor to expand immigrant legal services

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams stood alongside New York Immigration Coalition Executive director Murad Awawdeh and Councilmembers Alexa Avilés and Justin Brannan to call on Mayor Eric Adams to expand funding for immigration legal services.Gerardo Romo / NYC Council

By Noah Powelson

As the June 30 deadline for the city budget approaches, lawmakers and legal advocates gathered on the steps of City Hall on Thursday demanding more funding for immigrant legal services.

Led by Brooklyn City Councilmember Alexa Avilés, electeds stood alongside legal organizations and the New York Immigration Coalition to argue that more funding is needed as the federal government continues to increase its deportation efforts.

In Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed executive budget, $4.4 million was added to the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, a number that advocates on Thursday said is nowhere near enough to meet the needs of service providers “drowning” in immigration cases.

Avilés told those gathered at the front of City Hall the need for legal service funding is more important now than ever as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents continue to make raids across the country.

“When you go to immigration court on any given day, you will speak with dozens if not hundreds of people who are terrified, without legal representation, waiting to see if they are next to be detained by ICE agents,” Avilés said on Thursday. “If you sit in on hearings, you will hear people say that they were unable to find legal representation because of lack of services, [there is] an incredibly long wait list at pro bono organizations.”

The Director of Immigration Policy at Bronx Defenders Rosa Cohen-Cruz, said that legal teams across the city and state are scrambling to respond to the sudden explosion of legal service needs. Bronx Defenders is one the three providers of the New York Family Unity Project, a public defender program for detained immigrants.

“NYIFUP, like all immigrant legal services, is overwhelmed,” Cohen-Cruz said. “Teams are fielding dozens of urgent referrals every day and struggling to keep up with the volume. Since January, we’ve seen a staggering 220 percent increase in new immigration cases.”

Cohen-Cruz said that despite the increase in need and growing ICE presence in the city, that Mayor Adams “is failing to offer meaningful funding to service providers.”

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams also spoke at the rally on Thursday, and said funding for immigration legal services is one of the council’s “top priorities.”

“Mayor Adams must join the Council and all New Yorkers to increase funding for immigration legal services in this city budget, meeting the needs of our communities and protecting the city that we all call home,” Speaker Adams said.

Mayor Adams, who formally announced he was seeking reelection on the same day as the rally, has been under increased controversy since the criminal corruption case was dismissed last May. The mayor has been repeatedly accused of opening his arms to some of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans, and advocates on Thursday said he needed to prove his commitment to the city’s immigrant communities.

However, the Adams administration denies they are shortchanging immigration legal services, and accused the elected officials and advocates present at the rally of taking advantage of fear felt in immigrant communities.

“The Adams administration has ensured that no city in the country invests more in immigration legal services than New York City,” A City Hall spokesperson said in a statement. “Mayor Adams will continue to advocate for state and federal funding — as he always has — especially given that we are not receiving any new support from other levels of government. We urge these elected leaders and advocates to make good use of their time and do the same.”

The rally also comes as the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys, the union that represents public defenders at nearly two dozen legal services providers throughout the New York City metropolitan area, threaten a mass strike unless the city allocates more funding to the Legal Aid Society.

ALAA’s contracts with nearly a dozen legal services organizations are all approaching their June 30 expiration date. The union has said its members won’t work beyond that expiration, and that if a new contract agreement isn’t reached before then, they’ll go on strike.

At a City Council budget hearing on May 29, ALAA representatives told City Council Finance Committee Chair Justin Brannan the city needs to invest at least $74 million into the Legal Aid Society to meet their demands.

“If negotiations do not improve in the next month, we are prepared to withhold our labor and interrupt essential city services to win a fair contract,” Jane Fox, ALAA’s Legal Aid Society chapter chair, said at the time. “You have the power to value your own communities by investing in us.”

At the rally on Thursday, Brannan himself joined in demanding more funding for immigration legal aid services. Brannan, who recently conceded in his race to be the city’s next comptroller, said economic fears of a migrant crisis were unfounded.

“We all know a migrant crisis was never going to bankrupt the city,” Brannan said. “Mass deportations will bankrupt the city.”