PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Brittny Saunders, Center for Popular Democracy

(201) 803-2835, bsaunders@populardemocracy

Angela Fernandez, Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights

(646) 734-4932, afernandez@nmcir.org

New York, New York, November 7, 2013—Today the Center for Popular Democracy, the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Make the Road New York and the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic at Cardozo School of Law released a report demonstrating the hidden costs of detention and deportation and how these could be reduced by statewide expansion of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), which this week began providing legal counsel for New Yorkers who are detained and facing deportation through a New York City-based pilot program. The new report, entitled The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project: Good for Families, Good for Employers, and Good for All New Yorkers, illustrates how the failure to provide legal representation for immigrants who are detained and facing permanent exile from their loved ones and communities devastates families and calls our commitment to justice and due process into question. 

But these are not the only impacts.  Rather, state agencies and employers face some $13.4 million in costs each year due to detention and deportation.  The study shows how an investment of $7.4 million annually— a mere 78 cents per personal income tax payer—in a statewide system of universal representation would dramatically reduce these costs, saving $5.9 million each year. 

The study reveals that statewide expansion of NYIFUP would produce a wide range of benefits.

• New York State employers pay an estimated $9.1 million in turnover-related costs annually as they are forced to replace detained or deported employees.  NYIFUP wouldsave employers $4 million in such costs each year.
• The detention or deportation of a parent makes it difficult for some students to complete school, limiting their long-term earning potential, increasing reliance on public health insurance programs and decreasing tax revenues.  Over the first decade of the NYIFUP program, this would translate into $3.1 million in annualized costs to the state each year. NYIFUP would save New York State over $1.3 million in such costs each year.
• Detentions and deportations cost New York’s State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) about $685,000 each year because of children’s increased reliance on the program when bread-winning parents are detained and deported.  NYIFUP would save the state over $310,000 per year in such costs.
• The state pays over $562,000 a year to provide foster care for the children of detained or deported New Yorkers. NYIFUP would reduce these costs by over $263,000 each year.

“This analysis demonstrates what many of us already know,” said Brittny Saunders, Senior Staff Attorney for Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice at the Center for Popular Democracy. “Immigrant New Yorkers are integral to our communities, and detentions and deportations that damage immigrant families ultimately hurt us all.  With a modest investment, New York State has a chance to demonstrate how much it values the immigrant residents who are increasingly driving its economy and to be the first in the country to institute a statewide system of universal representation.”

Angela Fernandez, Executive Director of Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, commented “This report zeroes in on a financial reality that is rarely addressed in conversations about immigration:  the economic burden that is borne by New York State businesses, education and health systems when an immigrant is detained and deported.”  She continued “Providing free, high-quality, court-appointed counsel to detained immigrants not only makes judicial and moral sense, but it also makes financial sense for the entire state of New York.”

Javier Valdes, Co-Executive Director of Make the Road NY said, "This report shows the widespread and destabilizing effects deportation has on a family and community - something immigrants across the state confront daily. We urge the state to invest in a public defender system for immigrants in deportation proceedings to save unnecessary government expenditures and to keep families together."  

“The human costs of wrongful deportations, caused by lack of access to counsel, are borne tragically by our city’s immigrant families,” said Paula Shulman, a law student in the Immigration Justice Clinic at Cardozo School of Law, “but what this research demonstrates is that the economic toll of unjust deportations is borne by all New Yorkers.”

With the publication of the new report and the launch of the pilot program in New York City, the case for statewide expansion of the NYIFUP program is growing.  The groups are poised to share the new cost-savings analysis as well as lessons learned from the New York City pilot program with leaders and advocates from across the Empire State in order to ensure fairness for New York families and strengthen the state as a whole.

Images from this morning's press event can be seen here.