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Under immense public pressure, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a set of reforms to the NYPD on Sunday which included new enforcement for street vendors. Enforcement of code violations for street vendors will be moved out of the NYPD’s hands to administrative enforcement. Officers who might escalate an encounter will not be on the scene. He also announced that funding would be moved from the NYPD’s $6 billion budget into youth programs, but did not specify how much. Protestors have demanded that the NYPD be defunded, with $1 billion of cuts in the upcoming budget shifted toward community needs. CBS2
In other New York immigration news…
ICE Involvement in Policing Protests Sparks Outrage
Documented Original
The New York City Police Department worked with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to detain a protestor on Wednesday. A video surfaced by the Immigrant Defense Project showed one agent who appears to be from Homeland Security Investigations, a department within ICE, working with other plainclothes officers to arrest a man as a protestor with a sign watches over the arrest. According to a statement released by IDP, the incident took place at 7 p.m. in the Upper West Side area of Manhattan, after five mostly plainclothes officers jumped out of an unmarked SUV and threw the man, a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent, to the ground. A spokesperson for HSI confirmed that its agents did assist the NYPD in detaining a protestor on Wednesday because they believe that he was in possession of a weapon. Read more on Documented
Bicycle Courier Arrested for Violating Curfew
A bicycle courier who was arrested by the NYPD for violating the 8 p.m. curfew on Thursday, was, in fact, making deliveries when he was arrested, contrary to the NYPD’s previous claim. Essential workers were exempt from the curfew, which included food delivery workers. When a video of the man being arrested with his food delivery bag went viral, the NYPD said that he was not making deliveries at the time of his arrest. DoorDash, his employer, said that he was doing deliveries when the incident took place. Delivery drivers, many of whom are immigrants, were concerned that being arrested for being out during curfew could have immigration consequences. The New York Post
Immigration Groups Threatened to Sue Over Curfew
The New York Immigration Coalition and the New York Civil Liberties threatened to sue Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday over the “unconstitutional” curfew, which was lifted on Sunday. The groups argued that the 8 p.m. curfew had led to unwarranted arrests of peaceful protestors. “This overbroad lockdown has resulted in the unconstitutional arrest of numerous individuals for engaging in peaceful protests or merely going about their lives as free, law-abiding people,” NYIC wrote in a letter to the mayor. A similar lawsuit in California led to Los Angeles ending its curfew. Politico
