NYC nearly doubles spending on immigration legal services

New York City is slated to spend $120 million on immigration legal services in the new budget, nearly double the $65 million appropriated last year, according to City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia.

The funding for fiscal year 2026, approved by the Council and Mayor Eric Adams in the annual city budget finalized at the end of June, represents the most money ever spent on immigration legal services in the city’s history, according to City Council spokesperson Rendy Desamours.

The sum includes $16.5 million to fund legal counsel for “unaccompanied children” facing deportation, which is more than four times the amount spent on that population last year. Those are children that arrive in the United States without a parent or legal guardian.

The decision to boost funding comes after the Trump administration cut federal funding for legal representation for unaccompanied children. Gothamist in April reported on the plight of a 4-year-old girl and other children appearing in immigration court by themselves due to the budget cuts.

The funding also includes $24.6 million for the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, which funds three local public defender organizations to represent low-income detained immigrants facing deportation in New York City. The program received $16.6 million in city funding last year.

Another $33.6 million will be spent on other legal services for low-income immigrants.

City Councilmember Justin Brannan, who chairs the Committee on Finance and is one of the lead budget negotiators, said the Adams administration was unwilling to increase the funding for immigration legal services until about 36 hours before the budget was finalized.

In Adams’ executive budget proposal, the mayor's office initially sought to earmark $4.4 million for immigration legal services, including for immigrant rights workshops and other services for immigrants navigating the courts, through the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs support centers.

“The speaker and I, we drew a line in the sand and said this has to happen,” Brannan said. “We cannot shake hands on a budget in this moment that is silent on immigrant legal services in New York City.”

“There was no convincing. There (were) no turning points. … This is a continuation of what we accomplished,” Adams said at a press conference earlier this month.

Garcia, the City Hall spokesperson, also refuted Brannan’s claims.

“The Adams administration has ensured that no city in the country invests more in immigration legal services than New York City since before budget negotiations with the City Council even began,” Garcia said in a statement. “Mayor Adams had already increased funding for immigrant legal services before this year’s budget was finalized and had already surpassed investments made by the previous mayoral administration.”

The record-high funding comes as President Donald Trump’s administration ramps up immigration arrests in an effort to carry out the largest mass-deportation campaign in U.S. history. As of the end of June, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had nearly 58,000 detainees, the highest number in at least the last six years, according to agency data.

The Trump administration has also revoked legal status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants previously authorized to be in the country, including from Venezuela, Haiti and Afghanistan.

An estimated 412,000 immigrants without legal status lived in New York City as of 2022, according to a report from the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs.

Unlike in criminal proceedings, low-income individuals are not guaranteed lawyers in immigration court. But immigrants with lawyers tend to receive more favorable outcomes. A 2016 study by the American Immigration Council found that immigrants with lawyers were five times more likely to get legal relief than those without attorneys.

The vast majority of people in immigration court proceedings are unrepresented. For immigration court cases starting between October 2023 and September 2024, 79% of individuals across the United States were unrepresented, according to data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

In New York state, the share of unrepresented immigration court cases was significantly lower than the country overall, at 58%, in part due to the city’s pro bono immigration legal offerings. However, as more cases have been filed in New York City immigration courts in recent years, fewer immigrants have lawyers.

Sierra Kraft, executive director of the ICARE Coalition advocating for legal aid for immigrant children, said her organization lobbied extensively to increase funding for unaccompanied children.

“They [city officials] listened to our call,” Kraft said. “This population usually flies right under the radar.”