Abstract
This chapter focuses on the protection of undocumented migrants in New York City during the Trump presidency, a period of heightened immigration enforcement that explicitly targeted cities with policies of withholding information about immigration status from the federal government. The increased threat of unpredictable raids by federal immigration officers, particularly outside courthouses, led municipal authorities to increase funding for services intended to protect immigrants with precarious legal status, including information sessions about individual rights and free legal services to regularize status and contest deportation orders. However, given that contact with the criminal justice system remains the primary means by which federal authorities locate deportable migrants, a recent policy shift outside the field of immigrant rights, involving the decriminalization of low-level offenses, has also indirectly offered a significant measure of protection. This analysis attempts to quantify the impact of migrant-specific policies versus criminal justice reform and explores the merits of various strategies available to cities attempting to shield residents lacking legal status from the effects of national immigration enforcement, beyond traditional methods of limiting cooperation with the federal government.
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Notes
- 1.
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act.
- 2.
23% of residents were estimated to be Limited English Proficient in 2018 (MOIA, 2019, p. 13).
- 3.
To avoid making the card a marker for undocumented status, city government broadened its appeal by allowing transgender residents to choose the gender indicated on the card, by offering discounts to the city’s network of museums, and by extending eligibility to residents as young as 10. Similar in many respects to the card launched in San Francisco in 2009, the New York program, launched in 2015, has succeeded in reaching a particularly large audience, having issued over 1 million cards by 2017.
- 4.
ICE names these detainer requests Detention and removal order (DRO) holds.
- 5.
However, these measures apply to undocumented residents who live in one of the five NYC burroughs, but not to undocumented workers who live in neighboring counties in New Jersey, where close collaboration with ICE was common during this period.
- 6.
Although in March 2017 federal agents began to accompany detainers with “ICE warrants,” signed by an ICE officer; the intentional confusion around nomenclature did not have an effect on their legal argument. Neither based on criminal charges nor reviewed by a judge to determine the existence of probable cause, “ICE warrants” continue to be deemed insufficient to justify extending a period of detention. See for example Galarza v. Szalczyk, 745 F.3d 634, 645 (3d Cir. 2014) ou Morales v. Chadbourne, 996 F.Supp.2d 19.
- 7.
Bill de Blasio was elected as mayor in 2013 and reelected to a second term in 2017.
- 8.
This program replaced Secure Communities, which the Obama administration terminated in 2014.
- 9.
Enforcement operations took place in Baltimore; Cook County, Illinois; Denver; Los Angeles; New York City; Philadelphia; Seattle; Santa Clara County, CA; Washington, DC; and the state of Massachusetts, leading to 498 arrests over four days (ICE News Release, 2017).
- 10.
More precisely, total arrests in the New York area reached 2576 throughout 2017, of which 674 non-criminal (https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2017/localStats2017b.pdf).
- 11.
In 2017, 2006 individuals were deported in the New York area, of which 791 non-criminal (https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2017/localStats2017b.pdf).
- 12.
However, these numbers are still down compared to 2013–2014, when Secure Communities was fully effective nationally, using broad criteria for the detention and deportation of unauthorized immigrants who were identified through local jails.
- 13.
Data provided upon request by the MOIA.
- 14.
Data provided upon request by the MOIA.
- 15.
Unlike the majority of immigrant legal services, funded through mayoral programs, these 3000 cases were funded through City Council programs, the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) and Immigrant Child Advocates’ Relief Effort (ICARE). NYIFUP represented approximately 1300 immigrants facing removal in FY2018, while ICARE represented 1700 unaccompanied immigrant children facing removal.
- 16.
The program linked the FBI database of nation-wide criminal records and search warrants to that of ICE, both agencies being part of the Department of Homeland Security since 2004. As a result, fingerprint and other personal data that is transmitted during routine FBI background searches are now automatically shared with ICE agents.
- 17.
Information about court appearances is available online through the website of the New York State Unified Court System, of which New York City Criminal Court is a part.
- 18.
Given that one individual can commit multiple offenses (and receive multiple summonses), the number of civil summonses issued does not correspond to the number of individuals involved, which is most likely lower. Furthermore, based on widely corroborated data indicating that incarceration rates for the foreign-born are significantly lower than among the general population, it is highly possible that violation rates among undocumented immigrants are also lower (Rumbaut et al., 2006).
- 19.
Similarly, one individual can possess multiple outstanding warrants.
- 20.
Numbers of individuals deported with or without criminal convictions, or with pending criminal charge are available at https://www.ice.gov/removal-statistics/2016 and https://www.ice.gov/removal-statistics/2018.
- 21.
The City of Los Angeles protested the conditions imposed by the Attorney General for access to Community Oriented Policing Services in City of Los Angeles v. William Barr (2019), and the Ninth Circuit has temporarily blocked the provisions.
- 22.
Customs and Border Protection announced February 6, 2020 that New York residents would no longer be eligible to apply for or renew “Trusted Traveler Programs.”
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Sanders, H. (2021). New Pathways to Sanctuary in New York City. In: Faret, L., Sanders, H. (eds) Migrant Protection and the City in the Americas. Politics of Citizenship and Migration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74369-7_6
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