Josh Epstein, Director of the Immigration Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services’ Queens Office, testified before the New York City Council Committee on Immigration at an oversight hearing on the Executive Order 13 audit of city agencies’ compliance with New York City’s sanctuary laws. Citing the audit’s finding that only 24 of 3,672 civil immigration detainer requests were authorized under city law, Epstein urged the Mayor’s Office to review how the NYPD audits access to its surveillance systems and voiced BDS’s support for the NYC Trust Act (Int. 209-2026), which would let people seek judicial review when city agencies cooperate with ICE in violation of municipal law. “We cannot claim to have identified or stopped every leak of New Yorkers’ information to immigration authorities when we have no reliable way of knowing who is accessing these databases, for what purposes, or whether that information is being shared outside authorized channels,” Epstein said.

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