New York City officials continued to shell out tens of millions of dollars for illegal migrants fighting off deportation orders while the city has dealt with a mammoth illegal migrant crisis, according to budget data reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants have flocked to the Big Apple in the past several years, spurring officials to pour billions on food, shelter, travel and various other government-funded accommodations. The wave of illegal migration into New York City — an attractive jurisdiction for many undocumented individuals due to its liberal sanctuary city laws — eventually forced the city to not only tighten restrictions on shelter stays, but also prompted Mayor Eric Adams in September 2023 to announce sweeping 5% budget cuts to every agency. But while residents continued to face a worsening migration crisis at their doorstep, the city maintained a near-steady flow of funding for one particular service through the years: free attorneys for migrants facing deportation orders. Taxpayers shelled out $17,350,000 in fiscal year 2022, $16,600,000 in fiscal year 2023, and another $16,600,000 in fiscal year 2024 for the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), according to city budget data. NYIFUP is an initiative made up of attorneys that provide free counsel to foreign nationals in immigration proceedings. While the city directs taxpayer funding to a litany of other non-profit groups that provide various migrant services, NYIFUP attorneys specialize in providing representation to foreign nationals who’ve been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “Having a lawyer can make it much more likely that you can fight against a deportation case and raise any defenses that you might have,” a program manager for the Legal Aid Society (LAS), one of the nonprofits tied to the NYIFUP, explains in a promotional video for the project. In addition to LAS, The Bronx Defenders and Defender Services form the NYIFUP initiative. These lawyers provide representation to illegal migrants regardless of their income, relief eligibility and criminal history, according to The Bronx Defenders. Offering free representation to any detained foreign national, regardless of their criminal history, means taxpayers could potentially be footing the bill for any number of illegal migrants accused or convicted of heinous crimes who are now contesting their deportation order. Such a predicament is not sitting well with the more hawkish members of the New York City Council. “The issue has gone far enough,” GOP Council Member Inna Vernikov said to the DCNF about the city’s multi-million deportation defense program. “New York City needs to stop acting as a city-state and more as a part of a whole, under the jurisdiction of a national government that, per the U.S. Constitution, is the highest law in the land in immigration.” “I’m interested in dealing in reality, and the reality is that this rogue experiment has failed,” the council member continued. “Our taxpayer dollars need to be ripped away from any organization that enables criminal illegal migrants to wreak havoc in our city.” Vernikov isn’t the only New York Republican frustrated with the idea of New Yorkers footing the bill for immigration lawyers. “It’s a ridiculous expenditure of taxpayer resources,” GOP City Council Member David Carr stated to the DCNF. “While the federal government seeks to enforce our immigration laws, cities like New York should not be undermining that work especially when it comes to defending criminals. We should be deporting criminal aliens as quickly as we can.” Fed up with the number of violent crimes allegedly committed by illegal migrants, Vernikov and Carr were among a group of moderate council members in June that introduced legislation to roll back the city’s sanctuary laws. The policies in place in the Big Apple prohibit the New York Police Department from assisting or cooperating with ICE in most cases, but despite growing pressure from Adams and other Democrats, the task of rolling back sanctuary city policies has so far proven hopeless in a city dominated by liberal lawmakers. New York City has been rocked with major headlines in the past year regarding crime allegedly committed by illegal migrants, such as the Guatemalan national accused of burning a woman alive on the subway, the Venezuelan migrant found guilty of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley after relocating from the city, or the Nicaraguan man charged with raping a woman at knifepoint after previously being arrested for a separate sexual assault. The unprecedented illegal immigration crisis taking place under the Biden administration has naturally resulted in a record immigration court backlog, according to a congressional report released in November. The number of pending immigration cases hit 2.5 million by the end of fiscal year 2023 and reached around 3.6 million at the close of fiscal year 2024. In May 2024, roughly 29% of immigrants in pending cases had legal representation, according to data compiled by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. However, migrants who do have legal representation are far more likely to emerge victorious in their deportation proceedings and ultimately be allowed to remain in the U.S., with a 2016 study by the American Immigration Council finding that detained individuals with representation were twice as likely as their unrepresented peers to obtain immigration relief. The nationwide push for universal representation in immigration court stems from the fact that immigration violations are civil offenses, meaning defendants have no 6th Amendment right to an attorney even when they are too poor to pay for one. Groups like the Vera Institute of Justice, which was involved in launching NYIFUP, have helped establish numerous taxpayer-funded deportation defense initiatives in many major cities over the past decade in a bid to fill that gap. The Big Apple is where the push for universal immigration representation began. The city allocated half a million dollars in its 2014 fiscal year budget for a pilot program providing representation in immigration proceedings, and the following year the city council ballooned this funding to nearly $5 million, cementing the establishment of NYIFUP. The project in New York City eventually gave rise to Vera’s Safety and Justice for Everyone (SAFE) Network, and now the group says there are more than 55 jurisdictions across the country that have publicly-funded deportation defense programs. Vera did not respond to a request for comment when reached by the DCNF. “It’s hard to understand why New York City would want to spend scarce taxpayer funds to enable foreign lawbreakers to fight deportation,” Matt O’Brien, investigations director for the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), stated to the DCNF. IRLI, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates for tighter immigration enforcement, has tracked the spread of deportation defense initiatives and warns that the trend is growing across the country. Champions of publicly-funded deportation defense include President Joe Biden, who allocated $150 million in his fiscal 2023 budget to provide immigrants in deportation proceedings with representation. However, this request was fairly meager in comparison to what proponents are demanding — the American Immigration Lawyers Association had pushed Congress in 2023 to fund the pilot program to a tune of $400 million, and in April 2024 a coalition of over 100 organizations called on federal lawmakers again to provide $400 million in federal funding for the fiscal year 2025 budget. The nationwide immigration crisis has hit the city particularly hard. Government officials expect the city to have doled out more than $12 billion caring for asylum seekers through the 2025 fiscal year. Adams, who was once much more welcoming to those living unlawfully in the country, has since shifted rightward on the issue as the crisis has raged and high-profile headlines about illegal migrant criminals pile on. The Democrat mayor recently met with incoming border czar Tom Homan in December, where the two discussed a range of immigration-related issues and Adams hinted at more cooperation moving forward. However, despite his increasingly hawkish takes on enforcement, it’s not entirely clear where Adams stands on taxpayer-funded representation for foreign nationals in deportation proceedings. A spokesman for the mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment from the DCNF, nor did Adams’ Office of Immigrant Affairs. “New Yorkers are struggling to make ends meet in one of the most expensive cities in the world, while recently arrived migrants have engaged in a crime spree reminiscent of New York’s bygone mafia days,” O’Brien said. “The absolute quickest way back to safe communities and fiscal solvency would be for the Big Apple to help ICE deport every single illegal alien and visa overstayer in the five boroughs.” (Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/NYC Mayor’s Office) All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. 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