“Families separated by the foster system should not be forced to be apart even longer because of unnecessary delays in family court,” said Lisa Schreibersdorf, Executive Director of Brooklyn Defenders.

Jackie Gosdigian, Supervising Policy Counsel at Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) testified before an Oversight Hearing on Youth Decarceration.

The act would end the indiscriminate and unconstitutional recording of phone calls for people currently in NYC Department of Correction custody. “NYC’s Department of Correction and surveillance company Securus Technologies have constructed a far-reaching spying system with devastating impacts on those who rely on the jails’ phone system to stay connected. The End Correctional Community Surveillance Act (ECCoS) ensures that New Yorkers can talk to loved ones who are detained in city jails without fear that their private thoughts and intimacies will be spied on or their biometric, location, and financial information will be stolen,” said Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez, Director of Brooklyn Defenders’ Science and Surveillance Project.

Dinah Foley, LMSW, Social Worker, Immigration Practice testified before the New York City Council Committees on Immigration and Small Business on Preparing Asylum Seekers and Migrants for the Workforce.

The Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, and The Legal Aid Society - New York City’s defender organizations providing free legal representation to detained immigrants through the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) - issued a statement in response to the sudden termination of the free call minutes program at ICE detention facilities where immigrant New Yorkers are jailed.

“We urge the Council to pass this legislation to end a decade of predatory surveillance and restore dignity and basic human rights for all who rely on the jails’ phone system to stay connected” said Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez, director of our Science and Surveillance Project

The Imprint reported on legislative setbacks for key bills aimed at protecting parents and families from over-involvement in the State's family regulation system. "Nila Natarajan, Associate Director of Policy and Family Defense said that the failed legislation would have served to “empower and protect the rights of families and seek to minimize the harms of family policing.”