Joshua Santangelo of Children's Law Center testifies on SIJS and distrust

Good morning, Chair Encarnacion and the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

My name is Joshua Santangelo.

I am the supervising attorney for Children's Law Center's Youth Guardianship Project, which does SIDG work, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status Work.

Firstly, I want to applaud this administration and the council's efforts to protect our immigrant populations against the propagation of rules from the federal government.

As this body is aware, the federal government's recent actions have created real and irreparable damage and fear within our immigrant communities.

Many of the clients that we interact with are afraid to enter any governmental building, including state and city courthouses.

Many of our cases hit snags when guardians of our clients refuse to get fingerprinted at state courthouses due to fear of ICE presence.

So far, we've been able to overcome that by accompanying guardians, finding outside fingerprinting resources, and making applications to waive fingerprints where applicable.

But the emotion of distrust present within these communities is palpable.

This administration's efforts to protect our communities and separate the city government's intentions from that of the federal government are admirable, but there's still more work to be done.

There's so much distrust in any governmental body that is present within immigrant communities that we serve.

And we have seen this through Moy's efforts.

to disseminate Know Your Rights materials and through directors by city administrations that there is an intention to separate the city from the federal government.

However, as this committee has commented on, there's just not enough attorneys present in this city to do the work that is necessary.

So we encourage the passage of the Trust Act and similar legislation to

both try to limit how many cases are actually moving into the court system by holding the administrations that are passing information to ICE accountable and also to continue to propagate know your rights materials.

I would like to have commented on the

resolution as well, but I will just submit the written testimony in the interest of time.

Thank you very much.