Brittany Brown of New York County Defender Services testifies on DOC information sharing

Good morning.

Thank you.

My name is Brittany Brown.

I'm the supervising attorney of the Collateral Consequences Unit at New York County Defender Services.

Thank you to the Committee on Immigration for holding this public hearing on this necessary and historically overdue audit and recognizing that meaningful sanctuary protections need to exist in practice.

In examining DOC's practices, the audit identified information sharing practices, as Rosa mentioned, that were unknown and had received little public scrutiny.

Most notably, the audit found that DOC affirmatively and routinely transmitted information concerning individuals in custody to federal authorities.

Specifically, DOC sent federal law enforcement agencies daily lists containing information about individuals in custody.

The significance of this finding cannot be overstated.

It is unimaginable that in a sanctuary city, a city agency would preemptively cooperate with federal immigration authorities without any approval for such a policy from the mayor's office.

We are grateful that this was discovered during the audit, and it shows how this administration is handling the situation differently from previous ones.

But it also illustrates how difficult it can be for the council, advocates, and the public to understand how information actually moves through DOC without meaningful and sustained oversight.

There have been countless hearings where DOC has testified in front of the committee.

council, but not once was this policy ever disclosed.

We've also seen concerning and arguably unlawful examples of DOC personnel facilitating direct contact between people in custody and federal immigration authorities.

In one recent case, while our client was in DOC custody, a correction officer approached him with a form asking whether he wished to participate in an interview with ICE.

Put more simply, DOC personnel was facilitating ICE's access to a person in city custody.

We believe this type of facilitation violated our city's detainer law, which sharply limits DOC's use of city personnel and resources to assist federal civil immigration enforcement.

This example would not have been caught by the audit and shows why the audit's analysis needs to go beyond formal requests.

Briefly, I just want to also highlight the Department of Probation's collection and inclusion of immigration information in pre-sentence investigation reports.

The city should determine what immigration information is actually required to be in these pre-sentence reports and where

Department of Probation can obtain or verify necessary information without contacting ICE and what safeguards can ensure that the pre-sentence investigation process does not become a conduit for federal immigration enforcement.

Thank you.

Thank you.