Committee on Immigration meeting
March 25, 2026, 12:30 PM
The Committee on Immigration held its FY2027 preliminary budget hearing on the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs. The committee took testimony and recorded no votes.
What was discussed
- Hearing opens and MOIA witnesses are sworn in The Sergeant at Arms opened the Committee on Immigration's Fiscal 2027 preliminary budget hearing, and the Committee Counsel administered the affirmation to MOIA Commissioner Faiza Ali and her deputies before testimony began.
- Chair Encarnación opens the FY2027 preliminary budget hearing on MOIA Council Member Elsie Encarnación, Chair of the Committee on Immigration, opened the hearing, citing immigrants' economic contributions and a 2025 surge in ICE enforcement, and argued that MOIA's roughly $782,000 budget for five staff positions is far too small; she urged OMB and MOIA to work toward
- MOIA Commissioner Faiza Ali testifies on the office's legal, language-access, and community programs Commissioner Faiza Ali testified that MOIA is resourced at roughly $42.3 million for FY26 with more than 78 nonprofit contracts, and described its Immigration Legal Support Centers (29 providers, nearly 9,000 screenings since July 2025), the legal support hotline (14,700+ calls), a $3 million
- Public Advocate Jumaane Williams urges the city to expand immigrant legal services Public Advocate Jumaane Williams praised the city's sanctuary laws, described witnessing ICE seizing people leaving immigration hearings, and called on the city to keep expanding funding for deportation defense and immigrant legal services as federal enforcement intensifies.
- What do MOIA's five in-house positions do, and how many staff support it across other agencies? Pressed by Chair Encarnación on staffing, Commissioner Ali said only two of MOIA's five dedicated lines are currently filled (the Commissioner and a communications director) and that MOIA uses 64 staff lines across the city, 59 of them housed under other agencies; she said she is still assessing
- Has MOIA secured new funding, and will it move to flexible multi-year contracts? Commissioner Ali said the Preliminary Budget added and baselined $16.1 million for MOIA—$14.6 million for rapid response and legal support centers and $1.5 million for English support centers—while Deputy Commissioner Jasniya Sanchez said the office is assessing gaps and exploring longer-term, more
- How is MOIA connecting immigrant families to mental-health and health-care services? Commissioner Ali said MOIA is working with the Office of Community Mental Health and ENDGBV to map resources, hosts ethnic-media roundtables (one dedicated to mental health), and promotes NYC Care enrollment—which she said offers mental-health, substance-abuse, and primary care regardless of
- What is MOIA doing to protect mixed-status families in public housing and to track 311 calls? Commissioner Ali said MOIA is working with NYCHA and other agencies to submit a public comment against a proposed HUD rule that would harm mixed-status families, and she and Deputy Commissioner Lorena Lucero described coordinating with 311 to route immigration calls to MOIA's hotlines and flag
- How does MOIA prioritize immigrant survivors of gender-based violence and LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers? Commissioner Ali said MOIA sits on the Brooklyn Human Trafficking Taskforce and works closely with the Mayor's Office to End Gender-Based Violence, and Deputy Commissioner Lucero added that MOIA is helping conduct an assessment of resource gaps for transgender, nonconforming, and non-binary
- With ICE now reported at city airports, how is MOIA protecting travelers? Commissioner Ali told Council Member Lynn C. Schulman that the city's sanctuary laws are limited to city agencies and their cooperation with enforcement, but said MOIA was concerned by confirmed ICE activity at airports and had released a travel advisory the prior day, pushed out on social media and
- How does MOIA keep dozens of city agencies coordinated on immigration work? Commissioner Ali told Council Member Gale A. Brewer that MOIA coordinates through its interagency taskforce and individual agency projects—Deputy Commissioner Lucero cited the Rapid Response Collaborative in schools with DOE's Project Open Arms—while Brewer pressed MOIA to advocate for
- How does MOIA track what its contracted agencies and providers are actually delivering? Deputy Commissioners Lucero and Sanchez told the Chair that MOIA holds regular meetings with legal-services providers and partner agencies (DSS, ENDGBV, DYCD) to align programming and share lessons, and that DSS—where most immigration legal services live under HRA—handles contracting, though the
- What will the new baselined legal-services funding pay for? Deputy Commissioner Sanchez said the Preliminary Plan's new legal-services funding includes $14.6 million baselined for MOIA to continue its legal support centers and Rapid Response Legal Collaborative, but that allocations for FY27 are still being finalized with a focus on continuity of services
- What is the status of the sanctuary-law Interagency Response Committee under Executive Order 13? Commissioner Ali said the Interagency Response Committee created by Executive Order 13 is chaired by the First Deputy Mayor with MOIA in a leadership role, is coordinating agency compliance ahead of a May 7 audit deadline, and is beginning to meet stakeholders; she said MOIA will assess training
- Will MOIA expand the Haitian Response Initiative as TPS hangs in the balance? Deputy Commissioner Lucero told Council Member Rita C. Joseph that the Haitian Response Initiative—baselined at $1.6 million with seven CBOs plus Catholic Charities—screened 333 people and filed 120 cases in FY26, and that MOIA is moving clinics into neighborhoods and preparing housing and
- Is the city doing enough to support immigrant youth and unaccompanied minors? Deputy Commissioner Sanchez told Council Member Rita C. Joseph that MOIA is in active conversations with DYCD, ACS, and the DOE on youth issues, supported roughly 200 youth needing continued legal services with 69 assisted on SIJ applications, and is planning a family-preparedness phone bank with
- How is the redesigned Immigration Legal Support Center model performing? Commissioner Ali and Deputy Commissioner Lucero told the Chair that the former Action NYC program was rebuilt as MOIA's Immigration Legal Support Centers—29 providers across 38 contracts, embedded in immigrant-dense neighborhoods—and that in the first half of FY26 the centers recorded 8,756
- How is the $850,000 for provider filing fees being used, and who does rapid response prioritize? Commissioner Ali said the Council's $850,000 for application fees was spread across 27 providers (with about $1 million total once other funds were added), and she said the Rapid Response Legal Collaborative is focused on people who have lost TPS or are in status limbo, undocumented New Yorkers
- How is the immigration legal support hotline staffed, and what happens after hours? Commissioner Ali and Deputy Commissioner Lucero said the hotline employs seven full-time counselors covering English, French, Haitian-Creole, Spanish, and Urdu (plus Language Line for others), with expanded weekday evening and last-Saturday hours; they acknowledged that after-hours callers are
- Why was ASLAN asylum-seeker legal funding cut, and where did it go? Commissioner Ali and Deputy Commissioner Sanchez said funding for ASLAN and the navigation centers was consolidated into MOIA's Legal Support Centers funding and repurposed—along with $4.4 million from the Council—to provide one-year contract extensions to 13 former Action NYC providers in FY26; the
Agenda
1 item
- T2026-1372 New York City Council Budget and Oversight Hearings on The Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year 2027, The Preliminary Capital Plan for Fiscal Years 2027-2030 and The Fiscal 2026 Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report 12:30 p.m. Office of Immigrant Affairs 3:00 p.m. Public Hearing Held by Committee