The Mayor’s Office of Immigration Affairs is 5 people. Amid ICE crackdown, some NYC officials want more

The Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs has five staff, including newly appointed Commissioner Faiza Ali, and relies on 59 others across departments. These people serve the nearly 40% of the city’s population that is foreign-born, a group that also includes hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers who contribute $3.1 billion in state taxes. 

New York City Council Member Elsie Encarnacion, chair of the Immigration Committee, called for a dedicated city agency for immigrant affairs at the Wednesday preliminary budget hearing and an end to the current patchwork system. 

“How can we expect an office to meet our immigrant communities’ growing need, when it lacks sufficient centralized personnel to do the job?” she asked during the hearing. 

This call for a standalone agency may not be realistic given the city’s multibillion-dollar budget gap. But it was echoed by others at the hearing, and it comes amid a sharp escalation in federal enforcement. Street arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the first six months of the Trump administration were up by over 2,000 arrests, or 212%, compared to the last six months of the Biden administration. 

Officials testified about a surge of ICE arrests at the 26 Federal Plaza, home to the immigration court, where city residents routinely appear for hearings. “I personally witnessed federal agencies seizing people as they exit the immigration hearings, and it's very devastating,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. He called for robust funding of immigrant legal services, saying that “a budget is a moral document.”

Beyond the courts, there has been a larger backdrop of anxiety in immigrant neighborhoods, where street vendors were targeted in Canal Street raids last fall, and immigrant parents are taking children from school out of fear, Ali said. 

Ali, who previously worked for the City Council as a top aide to former Speaker Adrienne Adams, said immigration affairs has expanded its legal support infrastructure, launching support centers last July to conduct almost 9,000 legal screenings across the five boroughs. While the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs has a budget of only $782,000, it works with agencies like the Human Resources Administration and the Department of Youth and Community Development to execute its vision. Considering this, last year’s budget gave an additional $14.6 million for rapid response and legal support centers.

Ali’s priorities include “coordinating across city government agencies to make sure that they're aligned and prepared to support the long-term stability of immigrant communities.” But the hearing made clear that some lawmakers want a more centralized structure. 

Melissa Mark-Viverito, who represented the same district as Encarnacion and was the City Council speaker from 2014 to 2017, helped pass the city’s sanctuary protections. She said the current fragmentation makes it difficult to respond to the needs of immigrant communities. “The White House routinely posts memes and AI-generated videos that celebrate ICE and border patrol's cruelty,” she said. “At a time when immigrant communities are being targeted and tested at every level, our response must be equally intentional.”