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.”

Public defenders are sounding the alarm about chronic failures in Rikers Island’s mail system, where packages sent by families, even when fully compliant with DOC rules, are routinely delayed, rejected without explanation, or never delivered at all. These breakdowns leave people inside without basic necessities during the coldest months and force families to absorb the cost of items that never reach their loved ones. As Rebecca Kinsella, Director of Social Work in the Criminal Defense practice, explained, “It's really difficult for us to guide families and provide advice about what they can and can't send when no one has a source of information that seems accurate.”

Older adults are one of the fastest-growing populations affected by policing and prosecution in New York and they are facing a legal system that often overlooks their unique needs, especially when the collateral consequences of criminal charges threaten their health, stability, and connection to the community. In this Q&A, BDS Director of Social Work Susanna Eckblad, who leads our Older Adult Advocacy Project, explains how aging New Yorkers are increasingly caught in a web of criminalization and bureaucratic hurdles, and shares how BDS is fighting to keep our elders supported, housed, and free.