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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Natalia Aristizabal, Deputy Director of Make The Road New York
6:08:44
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169 sec
Natalia Aristizabal, Deputy Director of Make The Road New York, testifies on behalf of the organization's 28,000+ members, highlighting concerns about immigration enforcement practices and advocating for increased funding for various immigrant support initiatives.
- Highlighted the case of Dylan, a student picked up by ICE in the Bronx, to illustrate concerning immigration enforcement practices
- Called for increased funding for legal representation, worker protections, adult literacy programs, and education initiatives
- Advocated for the removal of NYPD presence in schools, stating that students no longer feel safe with police presence
Natalia Aristizabal
6:08:44
Good afternoon to Chair Aviles and all the council members present.
6:08:48
My name is Natalia Aristisavall and I'm deputy director of Make The Road New York and I'm testifying on behalf of our 28,000 plus members.
6:08:57
My written testimony is longer and I actually was going to start with some of the work that we're doing but I want to start our verbal testimony talking specifically about the student Dylan who was picked up in the Bronx.
6:09:07
And it's important to highlight this case because Dylan did not have any criminal record.
6:09:11
He did the process for asylum at the border and he is or he was in a current process and he decided with his lawyer that he should show up to his immigration case.
6:09:23
What we saw in Dillon case is two things.
6:09:25
A practice that we're seeing now from immigration where they're dismissing an immigration case so that ICE can pick up the person outside.
6:09:31
And a lot of these people actually get represented by the Rapid Response Initiative which currently this year we're asking for 25,000,000 for legal representation including a restoration of 600,000 that was taken away last year.
6:09:46
And I'm highlighting this is because these cases we're seeing them more and more where ICE just only wants to pick up people who are brown and it doesn't matter what immigration case people have.
6:09:56
And it's really unfortunate to see a student get picked up.
6:10:00
And both the DOE and the mayor's office of immigrant affairs should be doing more to help in his case.
6:10:06
We additionally also want to baseline the current funding of 1,600,000.0.
6:10:12
We want to invest 55,000,000 in immigration legal services to expand access to representation and increase in baseline 40,000,000 for the immigrant opportunity initiative and renew the protect New York families initiative to support immigrant New Yorkers.
6:10:26
Additionally we're asking to fully fund the Department of Consumer Worker Protections at 2,500,000.0 for workers rights enforcement to ensure that the new minimum pay rule for delivery workers and more.
6:10:39
We expand the low wage worker support initiative to 3,000,000 so we can help immigrant workers fight stolen wages and learn their rights and restore the commission on human rights.
6:10:49
I want to highlight just too quickly education programs.
6:10:51
We want to make sure that there is double baseline funding for DYCD funding adult literacy programs from 12 to 24,000,000 to maintain adult literacy discretionary funding at 16,500,000.0 including the adult literacy pilot.
6:11:06
And we're grateful that 14,000,000 was included in the executive budget for community schools.
6:11:12
We still need 3,300,000.0 for student success centers.
6:11:15
Twelve million for restorative justice.
6:11:18
And last but not least we can stop using some of the money to have safety agents or NYPD in schools since students don't feel safe anymore with NYPD in their schools.
6:11:32
Thank you.