While New York City has a series of "sanctuary" laws that limit its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, there's currently very little an immigrant can do if city agencies were to violate those protections and hand them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement anyway. The Department of Correction, for example, has been caught repeatedly helping ICE get its hands on people who otherwise should have been protected by the City's "sanctuary" laws, and has faced zero consequences for breaking those laws. Just last week, the Department of Investigation released a report that found an NYPD officer had digitally tracked a group of people on behalf of federal immigration authorities.
But this loophole in the legislation might finally change by the end of this year. Since the beginning of 2023, immigrant advocates and dozens of city councilmembers have been pushing for the passage of the NYC Trust Act, which would allow immigrants to sue the City when their "sanctuary" rights have been violated.
On Monday, the NYC Trust Act got a full hearing in front of the Council's Immigration Committee, alongside three other bills that would help strengthen the City's "sanctuary" protections, including an even stricter ban than the existing one on ICE opening an office in city jails, a law that would require signage in city buildings about the rights New Yorkers have when it comes to ICE, and another that bars employers from using E-Verify outside of the initial onboarding process, as a way to threaten current employees.
But the committee hearing was missing one major player—the Adams Administration, which, according to immigration chair Alexa Avilés had ordered all city agencies to not bother to show up to the hearing. That includes the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, which sent over a three paragraph memo outlining its opinions of the legislation (it didn't support the bills.)