New Pathways to Sanctuary in New York City

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the protection of undocumented migrants in New York City during the Trump presidency, a period of heightened immigration enforcement that explicitly targeted cities with policies of withholding information about immigration status from the federal government. The increased threat of unpredictable raids by federal immigration officers, particularly outside courthouses, led municipal authorities to increase funding for services intended to protect immigrants with precarious legal status, including information sessions about individual rights and free legal services to regularize status and contest deportation orders. However, given that contact with the criminal justice system remains the primary means by which federal authorities locate deportable migrants, a recent policy shift outside the field of immigrant rights, involving the decriminalization of low-level offenses, has also indirectly offered a significant measure of protection. This analysis attempts to quantify the impact of migrant-specific policies versus criminal justice reform and explores the merits of various strategies available to cities attempting to shield residents lacking legal status from the effects of national immigration enforcement, beyond traditional methods of limiting cooperation with the federal government.