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In New York, having a mental health condition can be enough to pull a family into the family policing system, especially if that family is low-income or Black or brown. Instead of receiving care and support, parents are often met with investigation and judgment by systems ill-equipped to understand mental health conditions. Aubrey Rose, Mental Health Team Leader in Brooklyn Defender Services’ Family Defense Practice, is working to change that. In this Spotlight, she shares how BDS’ Family Defense Practice Mental Health Committee brings attorneys and social workers together to challenge harmful assumptions by the family policing system, connect families to support, and reimagine what justice looks like for parents with mental health conditions who are targeted by investigation and prosecution, which can lead to family separation.

Brooklyn Defender Services warned the City Council that New York City’s rapidly expanding data-collection systems are exposing low-income and over-policed communities to unprecedented levels of surveillance and harm. Talia Kamran, Staff Attorney in the Seizure and Surveillance Defense Project, urged lawmakers to modernize privacy laws, curb discriminatory technologies like facial recognition and gang databases, and end the city’s reliance on tools that quietly funnel deeply personal information to law enforcement, “the normalization of stripping low-income and working-class New Yorkers, and particularly New Yorkers of color, of their privacy rights must come to an end.”

Brooklyn Defender Services cautioned the City Council that sweeping federal immigration changes have pushed New Yorkers into the harshest enforcement climate in years - one where even routine interactions with city agencies can trigger detention or deportation. Associate General Counsel Catherine Gonzalez urged the city to close loopholes that allow ICE to exploit local systems, reinforce detainer protections, and eliminate discriminatory policing tools that funnel immigrants into federal custody. As she testified, “ordinary acts of compliance have now become points of vulnerability.”