CM Avilés questions OMB on immigrant legal services funding restoration
Councilmember Avilés asks about restoring $53 million in immigrant legal services funding cut from last year, noting the partnership with OMB on designations. Solomon highlights $33 million baselined in FY27 and $54 million total in FY26, and expresses willingness to continue working together.
Great, thank you.
Thank you so much.
I want to start with immigrant legal services.
You know, last year, first, thank you for baselining the $33 million at the preliminary.
Last year, we saw, we had, there was a $53 million that we have not seen the restoration of, of this additional funding for this year.
A portion of that funding was
used to restore, honestly, the lost federal grants that we had seen for legal services in particular.
I have to press that, you know, the funding restoration that happened of those 53 million, really, we had a great partnership with O&B staff around making those designations
to service providers, and we would definitely like to continue that partnership.
Can we receive a commitment from the administration that it will continue to fight for that $53 million, particularly
at this moment in time where the federal government continues to harm immigrant communities and threaten on a daily basis that they're going to flood New York City?
Yeah, we're happy to continue to work with you on this.
I know that the immigration legal services in terms of funding is at $54 million fiscal 26, $71 million fiscal 27.
As you noted, we had added $6.7 million in fiscal 26 and $33 million in FY27 and out.
So we did baseline it.
So it is a significant sort of down payment on what we know is needed, particularly at this time.
We appreciate your advocacy on this issue as always, and we look forward to working with you more in the next few weeks.
Great.
And again, it was a great partnership with DSS, OMB, the council to make those designations.
We'd like to continue.
to do that work together.
Surely.