Rift delays immigs aid
A PROGRAM offering free lawyers to immigrants facing deportation has stopped taking clients due to a clash between Mayor de Blasio and the City Council over whether city cash can aid people convicted of serious crimes.
The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project has been refusing new clients since June because of the dispute over the legal services money, said Andrea Saenz, the program’s supervising attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services.
“Right now, we’re not serving our community. And people are scared that they’ll get arrested by ICE, and we want to be able to tell them that New York City has your back and we’ll get you a lawyer,” she said. “I never thought we’d be in this spot for this long.”
The city budget for the fiscal year that began on July 1 included $26 million to pay lawyers for immigrants threatened with deportation — but Mayor de Blasio said the money should not go to people convicted of 170 serious crimes.
Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito objected to that rule, and inserted language into the budget passed saying only income — not criminal convictions — could be considered in admitting people to the program.
The mayor wouldn’t agree to go along with that condition, saying only that the dispute would be resolved in the contracting process.
The fight left the legal services groups in limbo, unable to spend any money because they don’t know who they’re allowed to represent.
About 100 detained immigrants have missed out on representation in the six weeks the program has been out of commission, Saenz said.
“We could help these people if we knew that we had the funding to do so,” she said. “No one’s getting represented while we wait, and no one thought we would be waiting this long, unfortunately.”
De Blasio and Mark-Viverito’s camps are working to strike a deal, but it’s unclear how long it will take.
As for the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, de Blasio spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein said, “There’s nothing preventing this group from providing legal services to anyone they wish. They are the ones making the decision not to, while we attempt to work this out.”