Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good afternoon. I want to thank Governor Hochul for her leadership in protecting New York's immigrant communities from mounting attacks that threaten their ability to live freely and safely. And I want to commend Attorney General James for her ongoing efforts to combat these injustices with the full force of New York's legal power. We are together today to speak out against a grave injustice: the federal government's refusal to renew its contract with the Acacia Center for Justice and nearly 100 more legal services providers after withholding more than $65 million in payment.
As a de facto consequence of this decision, more than 25,000 unaccompanied immigrant children have had their legal representation abruptly ended, leaving them to navigate a broken immigration system alone. And for those currently being held in detention centers, without access to their lawyers, there is no longer anyone tasked with ensuring that they are healthy, safe and protected. That is a betrayal of some of the most vulnerable people in our city, and an insult to the very ideals upon which our nation was built. Today, as a result, children who have fled violence, trafficking, war and abuse will walk into courtrooms alone.
They have been alone before. Many of them had no other option but to travel here by themselves, across thousands of miles. When they made it here to our city, they thought that the worst was behind them - that things would be different. But now, they will stand alone again as they face attacks from a trained government attorney across the aisle whose sole objective is to deport them back to the place they endured so much to escape.
Some of these children are teenagers. Some are 10. Some are five. Some are even younger. Many do not yet speak the language in which they must defend themselves. And even if they do, they are children. They do not know how to navigate a courtroom, how to fill out an asylum application, how to ask for relief, how to gather evidence or plead their case. And yet, the consequences they will face, simply for coming to this country in search of a better life, will be immediate and severe. Without legal representation, fewer than one percent of immigrant children are granted immigration relief.
The federal government will tell you that they have fulfilled this contract with other legal services providers. Yet they have selected firms that lack the credibility and the seriousness to protect these children - including one organization whose founder and former CEO, a retired ICE agent, resigned due to sexual misconduct allegations. Make no mistake about it: the refusal to renew this contract with providers who specialize in this work is nothing less than a deportation order. I know there are some on the right who may delight in that. And yet, what could be less American than depriving those within our justice system the fundamental right to due process? What is more antithetical to our values than targeting defenseless children?
This cruelty is no faraway concept. ICE operates here in New York, terrorizing our immigrant families, breaking down their doors, separating children from their parents and casting them into this nightmare with no way out. Many of these children will appear alone in courthouses right here in our city.
I am deeply grateful to the governor for her quick and decisive work to close the gap created by the termination of the contract with Acacia. This $7.25 million infusion of funds for legal services providers will make an enormous difference for over a thousand children in New York in active removal proceedings, 251 of whom are currently in detention. Nothing can undo the cruelty and injustice these children have already experienced, and nothing can undo the suffering that ICE has visited on so many others.
But we can continue to do everything within our power to protect New Yorkers from being targeted by ICE with impunity, and to support all of our immigrant neighbors - especially Haitian and Syrian New Yorkers who have been left all too vulnerable with the revocation of their temporary protected status. Because here in New York City, we recognize New Yorkers as exactly that: New Yorkers.
In February, I signed an Executive Order to bolster protections for immigrant New Yorkers, in part by mandating a citywide audit of policies and protocols that govern interactions between city agencies and federal immigration authorities. And our enacted city budget allocated $16.9 million for immigration legal services funding for unaccompanied children and increased our overall investment in immigration legal services by more than $30 million this year, bringing our total investment to more than $150 million.
City Hall is also supporting TPS recipients in this time of incredible instability. New Yorkers who have questions or who would like to be connected with an attorney can get seek help via our Legal Immigration Support Hotline at 1-800-354-0365, or you can call 311 and ask for "Immigration Legal." And we are providing free legal consultations as well as assistance navigating health insurance and other critical resources for affected City employees and their families.
In the face of enormous cruelty, New York City and New York State will not sit idly by. We will confront these horrors and this pain with the action and solidarity they demand - and in doing so, we will show the federal government that we reject their inhumanity and their small view of what this nation can be. Thank you.
