De Blasio may want to rethink cooperating with ICE.
Via NY Times:
Under cover of darkness and in the custody of the federal government, migrant children have been coming in waves to New York, taken from their parents after crossing the southern border.
Even as President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday ending his administration’s policy of separating parents and children who have illegally crossed the border, the crisis was already spreading to a city some 2,000 miles away.
Speaking outside Cayuga Centers in Harlem, one of a group of social service agencies in the state that contract with the federal government to take in unaccompanied minors, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday afternoon said 350 children had come through the center and that 239 of them were currently in Cayuga’s care; the agency is not residential, but places children in temporary foster care and runs day programs.
The children included a 9-year-old boy from Honduras who had come alone on a bus from Texas, and a child as young as 9 months old, Mr. de Blasio said, as he issued a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration.
“How is it possible that none of us knew that there were 239 kids right here in our own city?” he asked. “How is the federal government holding back that information from the people of this city and holding back the help these kids could need?”
Mr. de Blasio said the federal government would not tell city officials exactly how many children were sent to New York or where they were being housed. The office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the state also did not know the exact number.
The consulates in New York for Honduras and El Salvador said they, too, were unclear how many of their young citizens were in the city, and of how to reach their relatives back home.