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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Michelle Sencion, Government Grants and Compliance Manager from Safe Passage Project
5:10:23
·
3 min
Michelle Sencion from Safe Passage Project testified about the urgent need for increased funding to support legal representation for unaccompanied immigrant children facing deportation. She highlighted the challenges faced by their organization due to stagnant funding, rising caseloads, and increased complexity of cases.
- Requested an increase in iCare coalition funding to $6,300,000, including a $200,000 increase for Safe Passage Project
- Emphasized the limitations of pro se models for complex cases involving unaccompanied minors
- Raised concerns about recent ICE enforcement actions and their impact on immigrant children and their caregivers
Michelle Sencion
5:10:23
Good afternoon.
5:10:24
My name is Michelle Cincion.
5:10:25
I am with Safe Passage Project.
5:10:26
I'm a government grants manager.
5:10:28
Thank you so much for the Committee on Immigration and on Finance for having us testifying today.
5:10:34
Safe Passage Project is a nonprofit legal services organization that provides free representation to immigrant children facing deportation.
5:10:41
Right now, we represent over 1,400 unaccompanied minors across New York City and Long Island.
5:10:46
We're a proud member of the Eye Care Coalition and our goal is simple.
5:10:50
We just wanna ensure every unaccompanied immigrant child in New York has access to high quality legal representation.
5:10:56
Most cases take three to six years due to serious backlogs in immigration court, USCIS, and family court.
5:11:03
They're legally complex, emotionally intensive, and increasingly unpredictable with shifting federal policies and increased ICE enforcement.
5:11:11
Our work is made possible through city council support, particularly through the unaccompanied minors and families initiative, but we are at a breaking point and I want to highlight some urgent issues.
5:11:22
We are very grateful for the council's ongoing commitment to the iCare coalition, but the funding has not changed in over six years despite inflation, rising caseloads, and increased complexity.
5:11:32
Safe Passage Project has requested an increase to our Eye Care funding without success and for FY '26, we are again respectfully requesting the support of eye care through funding for $6,300,000 which includes an increase to Safe Passage Project of 200,000.
5:11:49
We are also requesting $100,000 in discretionary funding for this fiscal year to ensure we can support our the increasing number of children impacted by immigration policy changes and enforcement.
5:12:01
Our team, including a pipeline of trained attorneys and social workers is ready.
5:12:05
We can act immediately to expand services.
5:12:07
We would also like to emphasize that while pro se models of immigration services are useful for limited types of relief, they cannot be the beginning and end of wide scale legal services for immigrants in the city.
5:12:19
We commend the city's asylum application help centers for assisting thousands in meeting their asylum deadlines, but these centers are not useful to unaccompanied minors.
5:12:27
Unaccompanied children are placed through the Office of Offering Resettlement and they face challenges in USCIS, EOIR, and Family Court.
5:12:33
These cases cannot be handled with limited scope.
5:12:36
They need dedicated attorneys who can see their cases through to resolution.
5:12:40
As mentioned, we were impacted by the termination of the unaccompanied children's program.
5:12:46
Our clients have been visited by HSI for wellness checks.
5:12:49
These visits are deeply stressful and traumatizing experiences.
5:12:53
There are now reports from national partners in Connecticut and neighboring states of caregivers who are immigrants and sponsors of these children being placed and being detained and placed in their own removal proceedings following these visits.
5:13:07
This destabilizes the child's case and it can shatter their support system that they rely on in The US.
5:13:14
We are investing more time as an organization and more resources just to keep our clients safe.
5:13:18
Additionally, our legal department receives at least one referral per week directly from foster care agencies serving youth in ACS custody for long term immigration representation.
5:13:27
While some of these cases do qualify under eye care, many don't because they're not in removal proceedings.
5:13:31
The cases that fall outside of existing grant scopes are difficult for us to place and there's no dedicated city funding stream for them.
5:13:39
Without one, many children are left unrepresented not because their case is less urgent, but because the system is not accounting for them.
5:13:46
We are here today because we are deeply concerned about the lack of funding for youth who fall outside existing grant scopes.
5:13:53
We want to highlight the increased absence of the increase the absence of an increase to our iCare contractors by years of advocacy and the escalating complexity of our clients' legal and personal needs.
5:14:09
Without minimal investment this year, we risk abandoning vulnerable children to navigate an increasingly complex immigration system alone.
5:14:16
Thank you for your time and dedication to supporting our work with New York City's immigrant youth.