REMARKS
Council Member Ayala shares concerns about ICE and immigrant rights
1:56:40
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Council Member Diana I. Ayala recounts a personal anecdote from her time as a city council staffer, highlighting the risks faced by undocumented immigrants in the criminal justice system. She emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between those who have been convicted of crimes and those who have not, particularly in the context of ICE involvement.
- Ayala describes a case where an innocent 18-year-old undocumented immigrant was wrongly detained and then released to ICE
- She stresses that being at Rikers Island does not automatically make someone a criminal
- The council member expresses frustration with the repeated conflation of arrest and conviction in discussions about immigration enforcement
Diana I. Ayala
1:56:40
I have a question, but I just wanna piggyback off of council member Palladino's statement.
1:56:46
Many years ago when I was a staffer in the city council, before we moved ICE out of Rikers, I had an incident that was very personal.
1:56:53
I had a neighbor of mine whose son turned 18 years old.
1:56:58
She brought him here when he was three years old.
1:57:00
He was not a documented citizen.
1:57:03
He was a good kid, went to school, he gets picked up for a murder.
1:57:07
He's a suspect in a murder case.
1:57:08
He goes to Rikers Island.
1:57:10
They realized a couple of months later that the kid was not involved in any, you know, any incident.
1:57:17
It was he was not the person.
1:57:19
He wasn't there.
1:57:20
He wasn't affiliated with anyone, and so they release him, and they release him to ICE.
1:57:27
He didn't commit a crime, and so we need to be very clear that when we are fighting, we're saying if a person has not been convicted of a crime, they are not therefore a criminal, under quotes.
1:57:39
And that's the concern is that people will get swept up because they're simply at Rikers at the time.
1:57:47
Not that they committed a crime that they were convicted of, so let's just get that very, very clear because I keep hearing it over and over again, and it really, really bothers me.
1:57:55
There's a distinction between, you know, having been committed and not.