Chair Encarnación asks about outreach in surge neighborhoods
Chair Encarnación asks how MOIA defines a surge neighborhood and how often outreach happens. Lucero says they go by council district, respond to reports from advocates and partners, and conduct at least one outreach event per week, sometimes more during crises like Haiti TPS.
And I appreciate some of your details in talking about how
neighborhoods that are experiencing frequent ice activity, you know, what kind of things are deployed there, some of the agencies that have been tasked to help.
You mentioned mass engagement, W.
DCWP, SBS, all great agencies.
In the surrounding neighborhoods or neighborhoods that are surrounding them, do you see it?
Like, what is the radius, should I say, of what classifies as a neighborhood that is experiencing a surge?
Well, we go by district.
So similar to the council's district map, that's sort of what we do.
When we hear, and we could hear this from advocates, we can hear this from the news, we can hear it from other agency partners if there is a nice spotting, for example.
I would say that the surge in New York has looked different than across the country, right?
maybe in LA, so very targeted to a specific area and location.
In New York, it's a bit different.
They're a bit more scattered.
So when we hear about them, we do share that with our outreach staff and equip them with information.
What we want to do is to be on the ground as quickly as we can to share some of the legal service forward-facing material and information.
We try to target areas where we know people will be, so train stations, business corridors, for example.
And then we try to match it up so we can get to people like workers, right?
So after six o'clock, for example.
And that's the way that we do it.
I will say that we have partnered with city council members.
I think we've partnered with you at least in one event because you're also the eyes and ears.
And I think that's an open invitation to work with us, given how close you are with the districts.
And you might know corners that we might just not by not having that insight in some of those council districts.
But that's a bit how that works.
And how often do those outreach surges, I'll call them, happen?
We do an outreach event at least once a week, and sometimes two or three.
And I would say that when the news came down from TPS connected to Haiti, we were in Little Haiti that week at least three times in one week.