TESTIMONY
Alexandra Rizio, Managing Attorney at Safe Passage Project, on Legal Representation for Immigrant Children Facing Deportation
3:58:20
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3 min
Alexandra Rizio, the Managing Attorney at Safe Passage Project, advocates for increased funding to provide immigrant children facing deportation with free legal representation.
- Rizio emphasizes the severe challenge immigrant children face in immigration court, where they must defend themselves without a lawyer against experienced prosecutors, risking deportation to dangerous conditions.
- She outlines Safe Passage Project's efforts to provide comprehensive legal and social support services, including school enrollment and healthcare, alongside free legal representation.
- The testimony reveals a consistent rise in the number of unaccompanied minors arriving in New York due to conditions in their home countries, despite the city council's unchanged funding for such services.
- Rizio requests continued and increased funding from the city council to support the organization's long-term plans for hiring, training attorneys, and scaling up services to meet growing needs.
- She emphasizes the critical role of legal services in combating the backlogs and dysfunction in the court system, advocating for human-centered and trauma-informed care for immigrant children.
Alexandra Rizio
3:58:20
Thank you to the committee and chair of this for inviting testimony today.
3:58:24
My name is Alex Rizzio.
3:58:26
I'm the managing attorney for policy and partnership.
3:58:28
At Safe Passage Project, a nonprofit legal services organization that provides free legal representation to immigrant children facing deportation.
3:58:38
We currently serve over 1300 children who live in the 5 boroughs of New York City and the 2 Counties of Long Island.
3:58:44
Safe passage works closely with partner organizations through the eye care coalition with the goal of providing high quality legal representation to as many unaccompanied minors as possible.
3:58:55
We continue to stand ready to serve children facing deportation, but we have a long waiting list of potential clients as cases currently take 5 to 7 years to complete.
3:59:05
Once we accept the client's case, we stick with them through their case's end, which is hopefully a green card.
3:59:11
As you know, no immigrant, not even a child, is appointed a lawyer in immigration court.
3:59:17
If a child cannot afford to hire a lawyer, they're forced defend themselves alone against a trained government prosecutor and a judge with deportation back to dangerous conditions as the likely outcome.
3:59:28
Safe passage helps correct this injustice by providing free attorneys to kids.
3:59:32
Beyond legal services, our social work team addresses the broader needs of clients such as school enrollment, housing, access to healthcare, psychological services, and public benefits.
3:59:42
We received funding from the city council through the UMFI funding stream, and New York State as well as private foundations and donors.
3:59:50
Unaccompanied minors are not generally bused to New York City.
3:59:54
Instead, they're processed by the federal office of refugee resettlement.
3:59:57
And are ultimately released to live with family members who already reside in New York.
4:00:03
In other words, unaccompanied minors will arrive in New York to reunite with family regardless of what certain governors do.
4:00:10
Because of conditions in their home countries, the numbers of unaccompanied minors arriving in New York have increased steadily over the past several over the past several years.
4:00:19
Here, they encounter a backlog court system and hard line immigration policies.
4:00:24
Despite the increase in the number of youth who require legal services, the city council has not increased our coalition's funding in several years.
4:00:33
Legal service providers are already at capacity with caseloads that approach the unsustainable.
4:00:38
We need resources to develop long term hiring plans, time to scale up services and to recruit and train attorneys, and we need to be able to plan for the 5 to 7 years it takes for a case's start to finish.
4:00:52
We have the expertise to accomplish this, but need increased investment from government entities to make it happen.
4:00:59
We're asking the city council to continue to fund this important work, and we are asking individual council members to consider additional support through local and youth discretionary funding or other legal services initiatives.
4:01:11
In the face of extreme court dysfunction and backlogs, nonprofits like SafePassage Project, are ready to continue providing human centered trauma informed services for our clients.