Economic Impacts of Federal Immigration Policy Changes

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If you wish to testify at today's hearing, please see a sergeant at the back of the room to fill out a testimony slip. Chair, we are ready to begin.

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Okay.

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This hearing is called to order. Good morning, everyone.

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I am CM Shanel Thomas-Henry, chair of the Committee on Small Business. Thank you for joining us for today's joint hearing between the Committee on Small Business and Committee on Immigration to examine the economic impacts of federal immigration policy changes. I would like to begin by thanking my co-chair, Deputy Whip Elsie Encarnación. I would also like to thank the representatives from the administration, members of the public, and my Council colleagues who have joined us here today, including CM Morano. The work it takes to start and maintain a business in New York City cannot be overstated. It is a noble and complex endeavor to turn the dream of a business into reality. The commercial corridors of New York City thrive because of this entrepreneurial spirit. Our commercial corridors also owe a lot to our immigrant entrepreneurs and workers that help create and maintain our city's small businesses.

In New York City, immigrant workers of all statuses are common in small businesses, and almost half of the city's businesses are owned by immigrants. Navigating permits, licensing, regulations, leases, and rent is complicated enough, but the tenacity required to create and sustain a small business in New York is being challenged further by the xenophobic political landscape currently being facilitated by the federal government. The seemingly lawless and violent activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement across the country and in our neighborhoods, including in my district, have left immigrants terrified of leaving their homes. Once bustling commercial corridors in immigrant majority enclaves across the city have reported decreased foot traffic, and businesses in these corridors also report workers opting to stay home due to the fear of workplace raids.

The effects of the Trump administration's immigration policies extend well beyond these immigrant majority neighborhoods. New York's hospitality, health, construction, and agricultural industries rely heavily on immigrant workers, especially undocumented immigrants. We have already begun to hear of the challenges faced by these industries due to the administration's immigration constraints and mass deportation agenda. The whiplash caused by the termination or pauses on immigration statuses that provide workforce authorization complicates small business employment abilities. The recent decision by the Trump administration to ban any business owned by lawful permanent residents or green card holders from accessing Small Business Administration guaranteed loans could result in certain immigrant-owned businesses turning to unreliable and unsustainable capital.

Our small businesses and commercial corridors are suffering because of these xenophobic and chaotic federal immigration policy changes, and today's hearing seeks to understand what our small businesses need in the face of these challenges. Our immigrant community and our small business community are what make our city special. I look forward to hearing from the administration on how we can collaborate to ensure that these communities continue to exist in New York City with dignity and safety. I would like to thank Tyler Walls and Rebecca Burillo from central staff for their work putting this hearing together, as well as my own staff, Derek Slaughter, Franklin Richards and Sierra Smith, and everyone working in the background to help make this hearing possible. I would also like to point out that we have been joined by CM Hanks, and CM Joseph and CM Hanif have joined us from Zoom. I will now turn it over to my co-chair CM Encarnación for her opening statement.

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Thank you, Chair. Good morning, everyone. All right, we are here to help some people, so let us get energized. I am CM Elsie Encarnación, Deputy Whip of the New York City Council and Chair of the Committee on Immigration. New York City at its core is a city of immigrants. Nearly 40% of the population was born outside of the United States, and many more New Yorkers are the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants. Our city has long been a global hub for creativity, opportunity and economic growth, and immigrant communities, past and present, are central to that legacy.

Immigrant New Yorkers play a vital role in our economy. They are the driving force in the workforce and a cornerstone of our small business community. As my co-chair noted, immigrant-owned businesses make up nearly half of all the small businesses in New York City. Key industries including health care, agriculture, construction and hospitality depend heavily on immigrant workers. Immigrants are not only workers, they are entrepreneurs, innovators and job creators. They are essential to the strength and resiliency of our city's economy.

At the same time, building a business or sustaining a livelihood in New York City is already challenging. Today, those challenges are being compounded by a series of harmful and chaotic federal policy decisions that directly target immigrant communities. Across the country, we are seeing immigration enforcement actions that are aggressive and too often indiscriminate. In our own city, there have been deeply troubling arrests at courthouses, busy streets and residential neighborhoods. Many of these so-called collateral arrests involve individuals who were detained simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For many immigrants, including longtime New Yorkers who came here in the pursuit of opportunity, this has created a climate of fear and uncertainty. What was meant to be the American dream has for some become an American nightmare.

Families are afraid to leave their homes. People with different immigration statuses are being caught in shifting and often conflicting federal policies and legal challenges. These policies have real economic consequences. Many immigration statuses are tied directly to work authorization. When those protections are removed or threatened, individuals lose their ability to work and businesses lose valued employees. This instability harms not only immigrant communities but also our small businesses and the broader economic health of New York City.

This is why today's hearing is so important. I am very grateful to the administration and to the members of the public for joining us to discuss how we can respond to these challenges and better support our immigrant communities and our small businesses during this time of uncertainty. I would like to thank my committee staff for their work in preparing for today's hearing, including senior legislative counsel Nicole Kada, senior legislative policy analyst Rebecca Bara, principal financial analyst Na'vi Baines and Assistant Finance Director Florentine Kabor. I also want to thank my staff, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephanie Herrera, legislative director Adam Newman Bernstein, and everybody working behind the scenes to ensure this hearing runs smoothly, including our incredible sergeant at arms. I will now turn it back to my co-chair to proceed.

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Thank you, CM Encarnación. I do want to make one correction: we are joined by our majority whip, CM Hanks. I will now turn it over to the committee counsel to administer the oath before we hear from the mayor's administration.

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Thank you. Thank you so much. Good morning, Chair Thomas-Henry, Chair Encarnación, members of the City Council's committees on Small Business and on Immigration. My name is Harris Khan. I serve as chief of staff at the New York City Department of Small Business Services,

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and I am pleased to join today's hearing with Deputy Commissioner Lorena Lucero from the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs. At SBS, we aim to deliver economic security for all New Yorkers, including immigrant New Yorkers, by connecting them to good jobs, supporting small businesses, and investing in our neighborhoods. More than half of New York City's 180,000 small businesses are owned by immigrants, including 56% of all storefront businesses. We recognize that heightened federal immigration enforcement has increased fear and anxiety across communities. In response, SBS has continued our efforts to prioritize outreach in immigrant communities, circulate MOIA's know your rights collateral — which includes guidance regarding ICE interactions and MOIA's free legal assistance hotline number. Notably, 49% of New Yorkers speak a language other than English at home and 23% are limited English proficient. To ensure our services are reaching all corners of New York, our dedicated outreach team canvasses small businesses across commercial corridors. Our outreach staff are fluent in eight languages and SBS provides translated materials often in 20-plus languages promoting relevant business service offerings and workforce opportunities.

Our outreach is further supported by 600-plus community partners, many of whom themselves have deep ties to immigrant communities. Since the launch of our outreach team, we have engaged more than 70,000 New Yorkers through over 1,000 outreach events in all five boroughs and in dozens of ethnic enclaves. From door-to-door support in Chinatown to emergency response in Little Pakistan, SBS's outreach model meets small businesses where they are. Our support also extends to street vendors, the smallest of small businesses. SBS is proud to have built the city's first ever Office of Street Vendor Services to provide street vendors with education, resources and the city's support. We welcomed executive director Karina Kaufman Gutierrez earlier this week to advance this work. This year alone we have already reached over 500 street vendors and we are excited to double down on this outreach effort in the coming months as new licenses are issued.

Federal immigration policy changes have not just impacted immigrant New Yorkers through enforcement actions. The Small Business Administration at the federal government recently made changes to exclude all but US citizens and US nationals from applying to SBA-backed loans, leaving behind a major gap in financing for small businesses. Despite this shift, SBS remains committed to delivering our most in-demand services and facilitating access to capital through our seven business solution centers, our NYC Funds Finder platform and city-led loan products. Under the leadership of Mayor Mamdani, SBS revamped our NYC Future Fund to expand access to affordable financing for seasonal and growing small businesses by reducing interest rates, reducing the minimum loan size, and reducing the monthly repayment rates.

Small businesses can learn about the Future Fund and much more at the city's largest resource fair for small businesses, the SBS Small Business Month Expo. It is happening on May 28th of this year and the event will feature language interpretation and will culminate a month of small business resource programming. We are expecting 2,500 attendees and dozens of resource providers. We would greatly appreciate your support in promoting Small Business Month programming by visiting nyc.gov/smallbizmonth. Additionally, we believe the FIFA World Cup will drive incredible foot traffic for the city's most diverse communities. SBS has been working closely to coordinate with the mayor's World Cup team and NYC Tourism to promote small business engagement opportunities through our FIFA World Cup mobile outreach tour, where we are going to bring our mobile unit into corridors across the city through email newsletters and social media promotion of both the business toolkit and a hosting playbook.

Our mobile unit outreach tour event dates occurring across all five boroughs are: May 13th in Jackson Heights, May 15th in the Bronx, May 19th in Little Haiti in Brooklyn, May 22nd in Port Richmond on Staten Island, May 26th in Koreatown in Manhattan, and we are planning for Little Senegal as well in upper Manhattan and are deciding on the date in the coming days. Thank you so much for this opportunity to talk about SBS's work in support of immigrant entrepreneurs during this trying time. I look forward to our continued partnership to protect and empower our immigrant communities and the businesses that keep New York City running. We welcome any questions you may have.

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Thank you for your testimony. I would like to welcome CM Maloney and CM Salaam. I will start with a couple of questions and then turn it over to my colleagues. Public reporting has shown that once bustling commercial corridors have fallen quiet all over the city as fears of ICE's presence persist in our communities. How has SBS approached its work in immigrant communities in light of the federal immigration policy changes?

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Thank you, Chair. Since January of last year, we have definitely heard from business leaders, community members and small business owners themselves of a real shift in commercial activity that they are experiencing and perceiving on the ground. Many of them are saying that it has impacted their bottom line. They are seeing fewer customers come in. In some cases, they are even seeing workers not showing up — some level of absenteeism among the workforce. It is very concerning. It is because of that reason that we have been completely committed and are doubling down on our efforts to reach immigrant New Yorkers. None of that commitment will ever shift and we are only doing more in response to this. It is also the reason why we have this upcoming mobile outreach unit tour. We are particularly targeting and making sure our services are accessible to the "littles" of New York City — Little Chinatown, Little Pakistan, all the littles that you can think of in New York City. Those are part of our priority neighborhoods that we want to reach to ensure New Yorkers can get the services that they need.

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Has the team at SBS thought about it internally — any ideas on how these commercial corridors can be protected or made active again? In addition to the "littles" program around FIFA, will that be an ongoing summer program, or how can we look forward to that?

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What we know is that this administration is committed to ensuring that we are able to capture the economic opportunity that FIFA presents. In our conversations with the World Cup team, which is led by the incredible Zara Maya Honda, and also NYC Tourism, we are ensuring that when they begin marketing campaigns across the city on FIFA and they are promoting small businesses, they are promoting small businesses in the neighborhoods that feature immigrants from the countries represented in the World Cup. We have 48-plus countries in the World Cup. New York City is the one special place in this world where all 48 countries plus hundreds more are represented across commercial corridors, and we want to make sure they are the ones that benefit.

Already, as NYC Tourism has begun finalizing their business toolkit — and you may have heard — there is a $26 special, a five-borough kind of tournament where businesses can sign up. If they offer a $26 special during the World Cup, they can be featured on the tourism website. There is also a calendar of events that tourism is preparing that businesses can submit to. We are ensuring that all of that work is being promoted and is reaching out. Already in the past two weeks we have reached 56,000 New Yorkers to promote those services and opportunities to engage with the World Cup. Again, it is a one point in time — it is this summer, between June and July. We are committed that wherever we see opportunities that the administration is taking, or opportunities that exist, we want to ensure that word is going out into immigrant communities across the city.

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Does that campaign include door-to-door outreach, like physically going to the businesses, or is it predominantly online outreach? What does that outreach look like?

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What does that campaign look like? To the degree that we have got a small but mighty team, we have a roughly six person outreach team for citywide outreach across the 180,000 small businesses. So to the degree that we are able to, we are doing that. And the dates that I mentioned in our testimony, the five tour where we are bringing our mobile outreach unit, the truck, as well as the people, we are tabling. We are going to promote the tabling opportunity and we are going to have our teams do canvassing of that corridor. And that includes, like in Port Richmond, that is a community with a lot of Mexican immigrants and other folks from Latin America. In Little Haiti, we are going to speak to Haitian immigrants and other Caribbean immigrants in that part of CM Joseph's district. And in Little Sagal, we will ensure we are speaking to other immigrants of Black and African descent.

So we are really focused on ensuring it is not just here is an email that goes out to thousands of businesses. Here is our regular social media drumbeat. Here is a potential press opportunity. Here is us being in the field door knocking. And here are our series of events in local communities that we would love, and as they get finalized, we will share them. We have the dates. We do not have the particular flyers yet, but once they are finalized, we will share them with member offices as well. So we would love to have all of you featured in them and help.

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I was just going to volunteer that. I cannot speak for all my colleagues, but my office will definitely be an extension at least for my district. Any tools that you have, please give them and we can be on the ground and talk to our businesses and make sure they do not miss out on this opportunity. A couple more questions. I am going to turn it over to my colleagues for questions. I do want to mention that we have been joined by CM Brewer. What challenges, if any, has SBS found that small businesses face because of ICE presence in immigrant communities specifically? So, like if you have a top five that businesses have said have been the main hardship.

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Yeah, sure. I think it really comes down to this: there is a fear, and a real fear, for personal safety that has emerged. As an immigrant New Yorker myself, that fear is very real to me. And then there is a fear for the business and how the business is doing. For many immigrant New Yorkers who are small business owners and entrepreneurs, this is the pathway to some level of self-sufficiency, and other traditional pathways may not exist as easily for them. So having this pathway be jeopardized by business being lower than usual, by having a sense and a perception that fewer customers are approaching that business, it really creates significant anxiety about whether they can make it in the city.

It is on the customer side and it is also on the workforce side. When you run a business, employee retention is huge. You do not want to continuously be looking for people. And as a former business owner, you know this yourself. So the twin challenges are on the business side, the demand and customers not showing up as much as they used to, which is what we have heard from business leaders and community members. And then on the other side, the challenge this has created with employee retention, since there is some level of worker absenteeism that we have heard and seen. So it is those two challenges that keep emerging in some of the conversations we have had with community members.

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One more before I turn it over to my co-chair. Does SBS have a sense of how this change in immigration policy might affect the economic growth of New York City long term?

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So it is hard to isolate. There is a variety of macroeconomic factors at play. There are the tariffs, there is supply chain disruption, there is inflation, there is the general affordability crisis. You look at commercial rents in the City and the level at which they are skyrocketing. It has really been difficult for businesses to survive. For some businesses, when you are really successful, you actually face a penalty at the end of your lease term because the landlord may increase the commercial rent, having realized you are actually pretty successful. So there is a whole variety of challenges.

But certainly, when we statistically know that immigrant businesses make up more than half of our business community, and we know how vital that is to our economic health, certainly when there is a sense of fear, personal fear, we wonder how many entrepreneurs are choosing not to be an entrepreneur at this time because of all the factors they would have to contend with in this landscape. And also all the folks that are putting all of their savings at risk by engaging in this work and not having the demand that they could have typically relied on.

So definitely, anecdotally, such changes and the fear that has been generated over the past year or so does have an impact on our economic growth. We are a city of immigrants and it is part of our fabric. It is something that we are concerned about and we want to make sure that wherever opportunities exist, we can counter that. We saw clearly that FIFA was a multi-billion dollar opportunity where it is already going to be focused on 48 countries. Why not ensure that countries and immigrants of those countries in New York City that have vibrant commercial corridors and businesses can take part in that opportunity? It is not going to completely alleviate a year and a half worth of pain for some of these businesses, but it will be something positive and can ensure that the limited resources being dedicated to this World Cup can also have a follow-through effect on the economic health of those corridors.

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Gotcha. Thank you. I would like to mention that we have been joined by CM Brooks-Powers and at this time I will turn it over to CM Encarnación.

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Thank you. So in your statement, you mentioned that more than half of New York City's 180,000 are small businesses. And I mentioned that nearly 40% of the population was born outside of the US, making them immigrant communities. Your staff is about six people. Is that enough? Five.

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Which part of the office? Yeah.

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External. Yes. No, your Moya staff.

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The Moya office as a whole, it is about 60.

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For the whole office? Six for the whole office. But the budget provides for five of your staffers. Correct. The Moya budget.

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But as we mentioned during our preliminary budget hearing, the office as a whole is about 60 people.

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Right. But okay, so it is not enough — that is the point that I was trying to make here. There is not enough to cover all the small businesses. There is not enough to cover really all of the collaboration that needs to be done in order to protect the small businesses. Something that I have heard directly from small businesses in my office, when a lot of these policies were coming into fruition, was that our small businesses really did not understand their rights. What was public space, what was considered public space, what was considered staff space, how could they protect their staff as well as their customers if there was, for example, an ICE raid?

So my question really starts with: one, how is the collaboration happening between your office and your office? Can you just detail that a little bit?

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Thank you for the question, Chair. I can start just at the top level and then I do want to address some of the outreach. I think in regards to forward-facing material, really, what SBS shared is always a goal for an agency: to ensure that immigration is not an afterthought but is truly embedded in the work. And I think what our colleague here expressed really showcases that the work that we do with them is really three-fold. We support them with language access and provide technical assistance as they are developing material and interpreting the law under Local Law 30. We also partner with them

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in outreach events. We have partnered with them just in this calendar year in four events. But it does not stop there. We also provide them with policy updates that might relate to their work. In addition to what was mentioned, some of the outreach material that we have put together, and sort of to the comment that you made, we made changes to our forward-facing material to ensure that there was a know your rights flyer provided in regards to what individuals could do if ICE comes into their workplace.

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Yeah. And is SBS on the interagency task force?

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Yes, they are.

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Okay. So just yesterday we were in a meeting and one of our colleagues, CM Zhuang, mentioned many of her small businesses are not on the internet in terms of a website. They just do not have that kind of access or that kind of support. And so obviously this is a community that is operating in a different language. Many immigrant business owners were trying to get connected into what was going on with the FIFA World Cup and really wanted to understand how we can support them.

I think the point I was trying to make with the amount of staff and the amount of resources is that there is always going to be room for people to fall through the cracks. But in a time where we are talking about serious consequences — deportation, fear of being able to stay in this country — we have to tighten up those resources to make sure that they do not. So I just wanted to understand: in those cases, where would any one of my colleagues reach out to here to really close that loop?

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So Chair, I think you kind of referenced FIFA. Is that kind of part of the...

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Yeah, I mean more as a business issue within a larger issue. I mean this is a huge thing coming into New York and we still have small businesses that are unable to gain access to that.

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So I think for us, we do have a five to six person outreach team, currently at five. We also operate seven business solution centers, one in each borough. We also have a hotline, 888-SBS-4NYC. And particularly to your point on website accessibility and the digital literacy gap, that website is supposed to serve as a more friendly, warm handoff space to get connected to services, instead of logging onto the website and then going through ten different tabs to figure out what you need. But you have got the hotline, you have got seven business solution centers and we have our in-person team that is also going out to neighborhoods.

Certainly more would help, but we have been committed to maximizing every resource that we have to deliver what we can. We are proud that we just started our FIFA outreach work as soon as the materials were finalized by our partner agencies. Within a week, 56,000 New Yorkers have been reached and have received these materials. Certainly we are going to spend the next month doubling down on this because we know that this is not enough and a lot of neighborhoods are not receiving that material. So we are going to go out there. We would love your support as well in this critical time where we only have less than 60 days. So we are going to do our best with the resources we have. We know our partner agencies are going to do their best. Any support we can get from community partners and local electeds, we would absolutely love that.

And then at our small business month expo, which is our flagship and largest ever small business gathering for the year, we would love everybody to please share it in your newsletters and engage with your constituents. We are going to have not only tabling by tourism and other partners that will promote some of these opportunities to the 2,500 plus people that show up in person, but we are also going to have a panel discussion during that day with Maya, who is our czar for the World Cup, with the president of NYC Tourism and with leadership from SBS, to further share from the top all of the ways in which we want people to engage. We are getting to a point where there are almost eight different ways in which small businesses can engage and benefit from existing efforts that could help them with marketing and visibility.

That is a lot of things to keep track of. So we are intentionally trying to make sure it is in a toolkit that people can access with a QR code and hyperlinks. It is also in person when we are talking to people. We are pointing them to the QR code. It is also at our large scale events and the expo. And it is also being shared through our email marketing. Of the 56,000 folks that we reached, that includes every single food service establishment that has an email with the Department of Health. We get that list and we have made sure every single restaurant and food business that we have a contact for has received that information.

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Okay. And for Moya, what have you heard about those working in the fields like hospitality and construction about the effects of immigration policies on the workforce and their business operations?

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Thank you for the question, Chair. And if you would allow me to take a bit of a step back, just to share some data: via our Axe Moya hotline and service that we do within Moya, we have only received ten calls connected to small business specifically, and it has really been more about how to access legal services than directly about small businesses. But just to say that at Moya we support immigrants as a whole. Immigrant entrepreneurs are just one piece of the puzzle. In the larger spectrum we provide support to immigrant New Yorkers.

And just to provide you with a bit of context to really answer your question: undocumented immigrants have the highest labor participation, as you noted, of any group, yet they earn the lowest. Undocumented immigrants earn an average of about $36,000 compared to naturalized non-citizens who make about $50,000. The biggest concern we have heard overall in regards to immigrants is remaining in status. Right now, as we have seen, the federal administration has really halted any hopes of affirmative relief, and the fear of even submitting an application for citizenship is real. People just do not want to because they are afraid of what might happen if they show up to a ceremony. So the bulk of the work that we have provided and the bulk of resources have gone to legal services, which make up about 90% of the funding that we give out.

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I agree. I have heard a lot of that feedback as well. And I know that when we are talking about what can be done, I think the frustration that all of us feel is that we are very limited as a city and we are trying to understand how we can best support both of your offices to make sure that individuals are being supported, whether that be by language access, making sure that flyers and QR codes — I think those are great — but some of them just do not operate in that way. So I am glad that we are going out into the streets.

I also am going to encourage that the expo be brought uptown, brought to the Bronx, brought to other places. We will find a space for you. We want to make sure that it is accessible and that everybody feels a part of it and it is not somewhere in Midtown where people may not be familiar with or may not care to go. And just that accessibility and that real compassion and care of saying, "We will come to you," I think really works well with small businesses, especially because they have a lot on their plate as it is. So I put that out there before I open it up to the other Council members so that they can have some questions. Thank you.

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As you have put it out there, we will say if there is an opportunity, if you identify a location, a venue, an event that is already happening, or something you would want to work with us on, we would be happy to bring our resources to it. And we have done a series of events in the district with your office and your predecessor when you were

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running that office as chief of staff. And we are committed to that work. We want to be in every neighborhood. We are going to be in Little Sagal again for FIFA and we have been in East Harlem even last week doing some outreach to local bodegas and delis as the city-owned grocery store conversation picks up. And so we are committed to this work. We will be anywhere and everywhere you invite us. Reach out to our teams and we will figure out the best way to staff it.

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Love that. And let us go both ways. If you are in my neighborhood, I should know and go. Yes.

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All right. Thank you.

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Thank you. I will now turn it over to CM Morano for questions.

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Thank you both, Madam Chairs, for convening this hearing and for your leadership of each of these committees. Thank you for your testimony. Just following up on what everyone else was mentioning on the World Cup, I know that you said that SBS is coordinating for the World Cup and you expect incredible foot traffic. What specific steps are being taken to ensure outer borough businesses, small businesses, including Staten Island businesses, actually benefit economically instead of all the activity being concentrated in Manhattan tourist zones?

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Thank you, Council Member. I think that really it is the leadership of our mayor and our first ever World Cup Czar who ensured that the five fan zones that the City was going to work with the host committee on organizing are being organized in all boroughs and that they are free, which is different than what was intended initially. That itself I think signals this direction of ensuring outer boroughs are represented and can engage with the economic opportunity.

Then there is this series of opportunities that are being planned. Any business in New York City, including outer borough businesses, could engage in this five borough tournament, I think it is called, where you could sign up for the $26 special and you will be promoted as part of tourism's marketing material. So when tourists go in and want to explore the list of people who are participating in this five borough tournament, they could see themselves listed there. There is a calendar of events that tourism is also putting together where businesses can be featured if they are doing FIFA-related engagements.

There is also a toolkit that tourism has developed in coordination with us that lists all of these different types of engagements. Again, it is almost eight different ways in which a business can participate in some of these free marketing opportunities for themselves. So it is a lot. It is a bit overwhelming — that is how many ways there are to engage. We are taking that to Port Richmond. We are taking that to Little Haiti. We have shared it across the business contacts that we have and we are going to commit over the next month to doing that outreach to ensure that businesses can benefit from these opportunities.

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In your testimony, you repeatedly mention outreach, resource fairs, translated materials, and know your rights information, which is great. But what measurable economic outcomes can you point to? Have business closures decreased? Has foot traffic improved? Have revenues stabilized? And I do not mean to sound cynical when I ask the question, but are we mostly measuring success by the number of flyers distributed and events held? How do those translate into real world economic impact?

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So there are opportunities for businesses to really plug into this World Cup. There are things that they could do even today without any of these opportunities that we have been mentioning in this hearing. A business, if it is part of their natural course to have games that are streamed, all that can continue. They do not need licenses from FIFA, they do not need a permit from SAPO, they do not need any other additional step. If they are a nightlife business on the North Shore and they already play games on their TVs, all of that can continue. They could easily just market it as a FIFA game night and invite people in. There are some basic rules but they are incredibly easy to follow and in most cases they do not need to have any additional changes to their practices. So we know naturally there is going to be an economic gain from just doing what they do.

We as a City and at SBS are committed to ensuring that where the City is intentionally creating opportunities for free marketing, we spread those out across the City so they can benefit. The City is also working under their leadership toward a cultural passport that would also feature different neighborhoods where you can engage with the countries being featured in the World Cup. Whenever that information comes out, we will be promoting it. So as things come out from our partner agencies, we are spreading the word. To your point, there is natural economic growth that will happen because business owners are going to be creative and it is New York City — they are always creative. But to the extent that we can help support it, we will.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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But before I turn it over to my colleague, because we keep talking about FIFA, I just want to ask — because we are a little over a month out and everything is coming — how are our businesses going to know when it is here? Like, is there a huge television blitz at this point to say, "Hey, now you can look at the information for how you can benefit from FIFA"?

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Huh?

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Nobody has a television. Nobody has a... CM Brewer, because I mean, if I go to the website now and I am a small business and I see nothing, the likelihood that I am going to go back two weeks from now, a month from now, is very unlikely. Everyone knows FIFA is here. So there is something we have not done. We have not done a good job of putting the information out to let small businesses know how to participate in a meaningful way.

(00:43:48)

Yeah. So as soon as materials were developed and finalized and an engagement option like sign up — here is how you sign up, here is the real call to action — as soon as we received them, they have been out in the streets. We have shared them with our staff. We have shared them with business owners. We have shared them with every single business owner that we have on our food and beverage and nightlife listers. That includes the download and the coordination with the health department. So anybody that is a registered food service establishment permit holder, if they have shared their email address, we have gotten that.

We know that it is the food and beverage businesses that are the most relevant here in this conversation. There are other business types — I have heard there is going to be a nail salon challenge where nail salon technicians will compete for the most creative and interesting ways to promote culture and life in countries of origin. But we know that economically, where a lot of foot traffic is going to come, there are going to be restaurants, bars and nightlife. Those are the businesses that we have focused on. The minute these plans are finalized and materials are ready, we are sharing them. We have been coordinating ahead of time with those agencies so they know we want to work on this. We are committed to this work and that is what we will be doing for the next...

(00:45:01)

...a recommendation. Because I know you said of the 56,000 people reached, it is all the food businesses that are registered with the Department of Health.

(00:45:12)

Sorry, it is not all — I am saying all the DOH registered food establishment permit holders. That is included. That is a subset of the...

(00:45:21)

56,000. It is a much broader 56,000. Just a recommendation would be to share that list with New York City tourism because currently if you go to their website and you look under the different countries for recommendations of restaurants, they may have four for each country. So just maybe being proactive — because at this point in time it is unrealistic for even a quarter of those businesses to know where to send their information...

(00:45:43)

...where to be known. If we already have the data, let us proactively put it out there to all these people coming to New York to say visit all of these small businesses. So what we are sharing with those businesses is how they can be featured on tourism's calendar...

(00:46:01)

...is what I am saying.

(00:46:03)

Do not tell them how to get featured. We should proactively feature all of our small businesses in the City of New York because we have access to their information.

(00:46:12)

I digress. CM Hanks.

(00:46:16)

Thank you, Chairs, and thank you so much, Commissioner. So in 2022 the Council passed and then-Mayor Adams signed Speaker Menin's one-stop shop bill, which requires SBS to create a one-stop shop NYC business portal where all the applications, permits, licenses and related information to open and operate a business are available. Local Law 94 requires that information be presented in citywide designated languages. What information on the portal is available in the citywide designated languages?

(00:46:55)

Thank you, CM Hanks. The portal is available — our understanding is it is available in 11 languages and it is OTI that handles technology contracts in the City. We advised on the business content for the website. How is SBS working to ensure the quality of the translations? When the website was launched, in our role of providing advice to our partner agencies, we worked with OTI to further contract with another vendor to really focus in on the language translation, because we at SBS felt as though some of the translated material that it was generating naturally was not optimal. So we worked with a partner which included human review of the content across the 11 languages and tried to improve it so it is more user friendly and understandable to immigrant New Yorkers. There is a mix of machine and human translations and all of our pages in the resources by industry section, in the business services section and in the emergency preparedness section went through human review alongside translated vendor experts.

(00:48:07)

Okay, that is great to hear. Now I am going to go a little bit local. For a business owner — I heard that you mentioned Port Richmond — but many business owners in Port Richmond do not even speak English or Spanish. They speak an indigenous language. What about small business owners who are not proficient in one or more of the languages designated by the City? What kind of recourse does SBS provide?

(00:48:38)

Yes. So I think that is where the citywide language outline resource comes in. If an agency's external affairs or public-facing teams do not speak a language, there is still a tool — the language line tool — that you could use and our staff are trained on using it. So if there is a communication barrier, they are able to call language line and get translation and interpretation.

(00:48:59)

And I will just add, CM, that with SBS we also partner with them at Moya to provide any additional support that they might need if there is an issue that is flagged, particularly with a language of limited diffusion as you mentioned. We step in to support as needed if language line is not accessible.

(00:49:18)

Thank you so much. May I ask one more question, Chair?

(00:49:21)

Absolutely.

(00:49:22)

Thank you. Staten Island is geographically isolated from the rest of New York City. The closest SBS solution center to Port Richmond is not on the island. If language access counseling requires a ferry ride and a subway trip, it may not be practically accessible. So is any of this counseling available in person at locations in Staten Island? Does SBS have offices in other boroughs? Because we feel there is a travel burden. What is the travel burden for a North Shore business owner seeking in-language counseling?

(00:49:54)

North Shore business owners can go to our business solution center on the North Shore, right by the ferry station, very close to your district office. I know our teams have worked very closely together and whenever we have had workforce events at the center, we have cross-promoted it. Your office has been incredibly generous in sharing it with your constituents. Similar to the workforce center, our business center is there too. It is in privately owned leased space. But we are committed to ensuring that presence in the north of Staten Island, particularly right by the tip, because we know it is an incredibly public transit friendly space. And if CM Morano is here, I would not say that, but since he is now here, I will say that it is the best location for the borough.

(00:50:33)

Yes, it is. I mean, part of the questions that I ask is so my constituents can hear, and that is just more about education and accessibility, spreading that kind of information. But we are really proud that Staten Island is becoming so beautifully more diverse than it has ever been. So thank you for all your help and thank you, Chair.

(00:50:52)

Thank you.

(00:50:53)

Thank you. I will now turn it over to CM Salaam.

(00:50:58)

Thank you, Chairs. I definitely appreciate the testimony that has been given as well. Just a few questions. As of March 2026, lawful permanent residents are barred from SBA guaranteed loans. Given that immigrants are more than twice as likely as native-born residents to start businesses and comprise nearly half of New York City's small business community, what alternative finance mechanisms is SBS deploying to fill this gap and what is the projected shortfall in capital access for affected business owners?

(00:51:32)

Thank you, CM Salaam. It is a significant gap in financing that has been created as a result of the federal SBA's rule change that excludes all but US citizens and US nationals from accessing federally backed loans. We can get back to you on the numbers — we have done some preliminary analysis and it is in the tens of millions of dollars for New York City and in the billions of dollars nationally. It is concerning, but understanding that we are all in a tough budgetary environment, we are committed to helping small business owners of immigrant descent when they do reach out to us.

If they are permanent residents or others that are not currently eligible for the federal loans, we are trying to scan the universe of lending options available to them through our Fundsfinder, which is a website — the first ever capital marketplace for small businesses in New York. It is called the NYC Fundsfinder tool. Through our business solution centers — we have seven business solution centers, one in your district on 125th — through the physical center, through the Fundsfinder tool, or through the hotline if somebody calls us, we will connect them to our financing assistance team. They will scan what is available and, although there is a gap, there are still some lending options that may make sense for that business, and then help them package their application so they can succeed in securing that lending product.

(00:52:59)

Thank you. The Trump administration finalized an agreement allowing ICE to access IRS tax data of undocumented immigrants. If fear of deportation drives undocumented immigrants — who paid $3.1 billion in New York State and local taxes in 2022 — to stop filing, what is the projected fiscal impact on New York City's tax base? And what steps is the administration taking to reassure immigrant workers that tax compliance will not be weaponized against them?

(00:53:35)

I can start. What we know and understand is that the impact will be high. I do not have the exact number but I will have it before this hearing is over. What has been done is work with DCWP providing information to individuals. We have also been leveraging our Moya legal support hotline to provide assessment if people reach out to inquire about whether they want to move forward or not. It is a very personal decision for individuals. But I can try to get back to you on the number of what we project the impact to be.

(00:54:15)

And if I may, just one last question. Undocumented workers represent roughly 12% of New York City's hospitality labor force and are critical to healthcare, construction and...

(00:54:25)

...agriculture. With enforcement fear driving workers to stay home and reduce courthouse appearances, what sector-specific workforce stabilization strategies are SBS and relevant agencies pursuing to prevent cascading labor shortages in these industries?

(00:54:45)

Thank you, CM Salaam. Our workforce system is primarily federally funded and what that means is you have to be work authorized in order to get the deepest levels of workforce services. But any New Yorker can approach our centers for some limited level of services such as resume help and access to our computer lab. The deepest levels of workforce interventions — the kind of strategies you are referencing — our system is federally funded, so that creates challenges in that regard. Thank you, Chairs.

(00:55:18)

Thank you. I will now turn it over to CM Brewer.

(00:55:22)

Thank you very much. A couple of questions. Does the City have, for small businesses — and this was during the police issues — panic buttons? Did that ever pass for small businesses, particularly the bodegas? And if so, how is it used?

(00:55:37)

So my understanding is, CM Brewer, you are referencing a City Council proposed legislation. My recollection is it did not pass the Council, but last year then-former First Deputy Mayor Mastro worked with EDC to provide panic buttons to bodegas that are part of the United Bodegas of America. My understanding is over 300 bodegas received the panic buttons through that program.

(00:56:08)

Okay. And would that be... would they be trained to use it if necessary for ICE issues, or is that a different topic?

(00:56:14)

So this is a program that EDC is administering. My understanding is it triggers a law enforcement response to the premises. So if you are a business owner and a tragic situation is happening, somebody is threatening your staff, you press the button and NYPD is then deployed. But I am just saying it could also be used for ICE as well.

(00:56:38)

Yeah, I would defer to EDC.

(00:56:41)

Seems like a tool that, if instructed correctly, it could be helpful. I do not know, but I wanted it to be in the mix.

(00:56:47)

Yeah.

(00:56:48)

Okay. Number two, websites. A lot of small businesses do not have a website in the City of New York. I know that from past experience. Are you working on this? This would be both an ICE question, a police question, a business question. Do you know how many do not have one? Is that something that you are working on? Would it help in communication? To me, when I go now to small businesses, not just because of ICE but all the issues they are dealing with, they want more communication. They do not all have BIDs. We do not need a BID on every block. They do not have chambers. They need communication.

(00:57:21)

So I am just wondering how many have websites, how many have communication channels. What are you doing about that topic? Because websites do help communication-wise.

I will start with some of the affirmative outreach that we have done jointly with SBS. To the point that not everybody has a TV, but some folks do have radio and read the newspaper. So in the past we have partnered with SBS to hold at least two roundtables with ethnic media reporters. The latest one happened in September of 2025 and I know we are working on putting some others together in which SBS and Moya joined. The core topic was immigrant small business owners and their rights regardless of immigration status. We provided resources connected to know your rights and information regarding services and initiatives that might be available to them. We also did that in 2024. The goal there has always been, when Moya leads the ethnic media roundtables, to have ethnic media reporters in the room so they could share information out in multiple languages.

(00:58:27)

Okay. Anything else for SBS in terms of websites or communication?

(00:58:32)

So we provide a six-module series on digital marketing that includes email marketing and other guidance. I did want to highlight something that I think is tied to several questions. Because we know that there are folks who do not have access to a website or are not comfortable navigating a website, there is a digital divide that exists in the City. We have our SBS hotline, and of that hotline I wanted to share that in FY25 we received 9,780 calls. Of those calls, the languages other than English that appeared to be the top languages were Spanish, Mandarin and Russian. In this year, FY26 to date, we are already at 8,930 calls, so definitely on track to surpass the number from the previous fiscal year. Again, the top languages are Arabic, Bangla and Russian.

What are they calling about though, generally? Is it how to get their lease, or is it something else?

So this is the entry point. If you cannot access our website, here is another entryway. Just call us and tell us: I am a business owner, I have a store, I want to open up another store, I want to sign a lease — do you have free legal support? And we will say yes, we do. Thank you for calling us. We can provide up to 40 hours of pro bono legal assistance going through the lease document, reviewing the lease document and negotiating with the landlord's attorney. The hotline is the entryway to our services. It is also our website. It is also when you speak to one of us on staff in the field in the community. We are just trying to make sure there are multiple modes of access so we are not locking any New Yorkers out.

(01:00:07)

And one of the services that can be offered is how to get a website, how to build a website. Does SBS offer that

(01:00:12)

service to people? So we have webinars on best practices for email marketing, websites and social media. Whenever those webinars come up, if you call us and say you want a website, we will look to see what the most relevant type of educational course we have available at the time is and connect you to that.

(01:00:28)

Okay. Because I think many of them do not have one, so I do not know if that is working. Thank you.

(01:00:32)

Yeah.

(01:00:34)

Thank you, Council Member. CM Hanks, you had a follow-up.

(01:00:37)

Thank you, Chair. This question surrounds employment documentation and compliance support. Has SBS given any thought to how they are going to address the fact that the IRS has finalized an agreement with ICE to share tax information on undocumented immigrants? I think that was April 2025.

(01:01:00)

Maybe I can start just to answer CM Salaam's question about the data. It is reported that approximately 14.4 billion dollars in total, and social security and Medicare taxes of 6.5 billion, could be lost nationwide according to the American Immigration Council, because undocumented immigrants or immigrants as a whole may not be submitting their tax returns via the ITIN. So I just wanted to share that.

(01:01:27)

Thank you. So if an immigrant worker stops filing their taxes out of fear, has SBS updated its guidance to business owners about I-9 compliance in light of increased ICE worksite enforcement? And where can a business owner get in-person assistance in filling out employment forms? Is this assistance available in multiple languages?

(01:01:52)

Thank you, Council Member. On tax-related submissions, the City government has DCWP offering free tax prep for New Yorkers, but also for small business owners under certain eligibility thresholds. It is our practice to refer them to experts in the tax field, and that is DCWP.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair.

(01:02:13)

Thank you. CM Brooks-Powers had to leave, but she did have a couple of questions. As immigration enforcement increases and fear grows in communities, are SBS and Moya seeing a shift of workers and small businesses into more informal or off-the-books economic activity?

(01:02:36)

So I can start and I will pass it to my colleague at Moya. We have generally seen incredible anxiety and fear at every level of participation in the economy, and that includes front of house, that includes ownership, that includes working, and that also includes the informal economy. There are street vendors who are no longer vending due to personal fear. So there is a whole variety of concerns that they have. Our understanding, and anecdotally what I have heard from our community leaders and business owners, is not necessarily a segmentation by

(01:03:12)

formal and informal, but more that fear just persists in this trying time.

(01:03:18)

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think anecdotally it is the same as what was shared by SBS. I will just say that immigrants, as we know, persevere and will find a way to make ends meet. But in regards to the specific data, we do not have that as of now.

(01:03:35)

Okay. What risks do you see this poses for worker exploitation, wage theft and long-term economic mobility? And how is the City responding?

(01:03:48)

Yeah, I can start. I think what we laid out at the very beginning is that with economic mobility, what we know is that gaining legal status is always key to ensuring economic mobility. The stat that I shared previously: undocumented immigrants earn less than $15,000 compared to somebody who has some sort of status. So a big push that we have made at Moya has been providing legal services to folks so they can enter this space. Again, as Chair Encarnación mentioned, it is a difficult time given how aggressive the federal government has been. Even affirmative relief as simple as citizenship causes fear in folks just entering or pursuing that pathway.

(01:04:40)

Can you speak to whether the economic impacts of federal immigration policy changes are disproportionately affecting specific neighborhoods or commercial corridors with high concentrations of immigrant-owned businesses?

(01:04:55)

Thank you, Chair. On actual vacancy rates and macro data, we are not necessarily seeing any significant shifts or increased instability in storefronts. It is generally stable if not trending downwards. But we do not think that just because the data shows storefronts are relatively stable, that means there is not significant change happening in the economy. Clearly business owners and community leaders are all citing it, and when we experience our city, we know our city. When you walk down parts of Diversity Plaza at some points in time, it does feel different, and that spreads across commercial corridors. So even though businesses might not be at the level...

(01:05:40)

You mean Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights?

(01:05:42)

Jackson Heights, yes. Even though the business owners themselves might still be operational, I do not think that in any way suggests that the impact is not real or that people are not actually perceiving a sense of impact to their bottom line.

(01:05:58)

Well, I will say that reports have shown that Washington Heights, Sunset Park and even my district in Corona have seen a huge uptick in ICE raids. So how has your office seen, in those particular areas, a decrease in foot traffic in those corridors? Are more businesses from those

(01:06:21)

specific areas reaching out to you? So we do not have any tools to track foot traffic itself. We know some business improvement districts have some proprietary software to do that. But what we do track citywide is storefront occupancy rates, and that rate has not significantly shifted. In fact it is actually decreasing — vacancies are decreasing, which means occupancies are relatively healthy. But again, just because the occupancy rates are healthy does not really mean we are in a great place economically for our immigrant communities.

(01:06:54)

Chair, if you would allow me, because I think I missed part of your question a couple of questions ago. Just to also say, in regards to the point that you made connected to impacts on the workforce in connection to harassment and things like that, we did partner with CCHR and created a flyer in April 2026: "Immigrants in New York City: Human Rights at Work and at Home," given some of the issues you laid out regarding abusive behaviors and things to that extent. We have been sharing that widely.

To add to that, some affirmative outreach in your district in Corona, Queens: between January and February, where we were hearing heightened concerns coming out of the area, Moya's outreach team led eight events in collaboration with local community-based organizations. At Moya, it is not only that we are deployed because we are deciding where to go — it is also through partnerships with local Council Members as well as local community-based organizations. So I just wanted to share that with you as well.

(01:07:58)

Thank you. And then a final question from CM Brooks-Powers: how is the City targeting resources to prevent long-term disinvestment in these areas, and what are the projected long-term economic impacts of federal immigration policy changes on Southeast Queens specifically?

(01:08:23)

So again, we have not seen any data to suggest there are persistent and prolonged levels of economic impact that are statistically showing up in any of our analyses. But we are happy to, after this hearing, take a look into Southeast Queens — the occupancy rates there, the Council district, the community board — and see if there is anything of that regard. We will share it with CM Brooks-Powers.

(01:08:49)

How are you going about tracking this type of data? Because you are saying you have not seen any data yet. What are your tools to actually track this specifically and how it is affecting our businesses?

(01:09:02)

So on City storefront occupancy, we have a citywide resource to be able to see on a quarterly basis. There is a street canvassing that happens to track whether a business is open or closed in a given quarter. At the end of the quarter, we have an updated number for all of New York City that informs us of occupancy rates.

(01:09:21)

So we are tracing it solely based on occupancy, not actual sales. So if these businesses are suffering, quote unquote, in silence, we are unaware that they are in dire need just because their doors are technically still open.

(01:09:36)

Yes, that is exactly the point I was making. Just because the data shows occupancy rates are trending downwards in vacancies, we should not assume that means there is great economic health. There are corridors in the City where we are hearing from business owners that they are perceiving a significant decrease in foot traffic. So we should not read into the citywide data on occupancy to suggest everything is great and we should keep moving. Clearly something has shifted in the City and we have got to be more targeted and mindful of those changes.

(01:10:07)

What are we looking at? How are we going to be more targeted and actually capture the data?

(01:10:12)

So on the data, I would argue, Chair, that small businesses would not want to share their sales data with government or with us. They would very much be uncomfortable with that level of data sharing. But the fact that they share these experiences with us when they feel pain in their communities, and they want us to be out there to help guide them and share the know your rights materials that Moya has helped develop, and to ensure that they are able to protect their workers — I think at some point it comes down to not just the bottom line of the business but the people that the business employs, how much they love the people they serve in the community and also the people they take care of as their workforce. That is the level of support we are providing on the ground, connecting New Yorkers to the know your rights materials. Again, whenever opportunities arise where it is free marketing for them or something else of value, we will be out there to share that. And that is what we are doing with the FIFA World Cup.

(01:11:00)

Okay. I would like to acknowledge that we have been joined by CM Krishnan, who has some questions. You do not have any questions? Okay, my apologies. I stand corrected. I have a couple more, and we have been joined by CM Avilés. As we talk about street vendors, one visible example of ICE activity in New York City was seen on Canal Street, where a raid took place and multiple vendors were taken into custody. Did SBS or Moya perform any outreach to the vendors who were taken or to any other vendors in that area?

(01:11:37)

Yeah. We did work and connect with the Street Vendor Project at the time. There was some canvassing that was done post-raid. We also connected with some of the local

(01:11:49)

organizers who had gained the trust of individuals. So there was that, and partly outreach that was done by our office.

(01:12:00)

And we were in close touch with a community leader who was in touch with the vendors that were impacted, and we have always coordinated with them and we continue to do so.

(01:12:10)

Okay. With SBS's new Office of Street Vendor Services, how will outreach be conducted and what information will be shared with vendors moving forward?

(01:12:20)

So we are really excited. First, thank you to the City Council for overriding the veto that took place in December to ensure that we were in a position to launch this Office of Street Vendor Services. It was a priority for our agency to ensure we deepen work in this field. The legislation required a start date in August. We have decided to start this office much earlier — months before its legislative requirement — and we were proud to share, right before our preliminary hearing, that Karina Kaufman Gutierrez, the Street Vendor Project's co-director, is the City's first Executive Director for this Office of Street Vendor Services. She started on Monday. We have been meeting daily, she and I, and we are excited to build that team out and do the work in this field.

We will certainly leverage our existing resources, but this is an area where we want to make sure that vendors are able to get targeted and curated services, not just the general scope of business services that we provide at SBS. That includes know your rights. The Street Vendor Project has a contract through SBS for Chamber on the Go, and they have their own version of know your rights materials and collateral that is more tailored to street vendors and more culturally responsive to them, with more specific guidance on how to engage. That is the level of partnership we will continue to learn from and deepen with Karina on board.

(01:13:46)

How does the Office of Street Vendor Services work with Moya?

(01:13:51)

Well, I think it is day three. It is day three.

(01:13:54)

But we have worked with Karina in the past and with the Street Vendor Project in the past. So we are looking forward to the collaboration. I think we have a meeting in the books soon. We are looking forward to supporting her in her new role.

(01:14:08)

I will turn it over to the Council Member.

(01:14:11)

I want to shift gears a little bit to talk about — back in 2019, SBS at a Council hearing launched an initiative called the Immigrant Business Initiative.

(01:14:22)

Yes.

(01:14:23)

I wanted to know in your words what was the purpose of the initiative. I know that it was a three-year pilot program. I wanted to understand — it has since ended — so I wanted to understand if you were looking to revive it.

(01:14:38)

Thank you, Chair. So the Immigrant Business Initiative is a de Blasio-era 2015 to 2017 three-year pilot that was privately funded. It was funded through the city community development fund. It was designed to help — what it really accomplished was a guide that packaged and consolidated some existing resources into more user-friendly framing for immigrant entrepreneurs. It was accompanied by grants to six community-based organizations to further share that guide and those resources — the existing resources — with local immigrant communities.

This is at a time when we did not have a citywide agency outreach team. This is at a time when we did not even have our hotline, which we have reported out has connected over 9,000 New Yorkers to phone calls — including multilingual phone calls — over the past fiscal year. So in 2015, this was a point-in-time effort to reach immigrant New Yorkers. In 2026, and certainly under this new era, the focus on immigrant New Yorkers and immigrant entrepreneurs is baked into almost all of our work. It is not a siloed program that we are launching. It is something that we do on a daily basis for all of our programs and we ensure that that focus remains.

(01:15:59)

But that guide — do you see a future where SBS updates it? Is there a commitment to update it, a commitment to keep the guide? I understand that it is now present in all the work that you do, but handing someone a guide — I mean, obviously there is a reason to understand how you launch, develop and grow a small business from an immigrant standpoint. So I am wondering if there were any ideas of how to update it and share it.

(01:16:28)

So from time to time we have reviewed it to understand whether it makes sense to update it. I think it comes back to the fact that it is really dense. We provide over at least 40 business services. So putting it in a guide is not really the most accessible approach. It is really creating another layer that people have to go through, versus ensuring that when a New Yorker raises concerns with their business, we have the suite of services available to respond — and not just waiting for them to raise that concern, but being out there proactively in the community with local community leaders and business leaders. So the current intention is to ensure we bake a focus on immigrant New Yorkers throughout our work and we do not create guides and one-off websites that live on pages and then direct people to the page instead of the actual service, creating multiple layers before a person can access.

(01:17:17)

I understand. I just think that the tendency is always to say you can find it on our website, but it does not necessarily work that way for everyone. A guide — a paper guide — sometimes, while we run the risk of things maybe not being updated as quickly, we are getting information that at least points them in a direction, as opposed to a website where they may not go and which may not even be in their language.

(01:17:46)

But we do not just do the website. That is what I think we are trying to get at — the website is a very small part of our outreach strategy. It is the hotline. It is our in-person staff. It is speaking in the language that the community members are speaking. It is all of that. And if we...

(01:17:58)

How are you getting that to those people?

(01:18:00)

Through outreach. If we did have resources too — again, this was a three-year privately funded resource. If we had funding to fund CBOs to do outreach, we would love to do that as well. But at the current moment in time, we are now in a place where we have a whole citywide team that does this outreach. At that point in time, there was no citywide outreach team at SBS.

(01:18:22)

The six-person citywide team — we want to think of it as this big force. I mean, it is still six people. What my goal here is to find out how we as a Council support the growth of these organizations, these offices, these departments — understanding where that funding is needed and how it impacts our small businesses. Because what we are seeing on the ground is all of these question marks about how do they get help, and they come to us, right? Because we are the local elected officials and we are in their communities. So of course it is our job to help them, but also to help you and to make sure that you are getting everything that you need in order to make this successful. So that is where we are at.

I wanted to ask about the metrics, because I am surprised to hear that vacancies are actually going down. In my community that is not the case — vacant storefronts. Do you think they would be?

(01:19:32)

I am sorry if I misspoke and suggested that in your community it is decreasing. We will follow up with your district. Generally, citywide it is stable and decreasing.

(01:19:41)

Okay. Well, they are decreasing — I can tell you that. You do not have to follow up with me. I can tell you it is decreasing in my community. To the point of the metrics — I would love to work with your office to see how we can find an innovative way to track how businesses are doing and what exactly is impacting them. Because it is difficult for us, as you said in the beginning, to pinpoint that immigration is the problem, or if it is inspections, if it is violations, if it is new legislation that we passed in 2009. We do not know what it is that is impacting our businesses.

(01:20:19)

We really should work collaboratively to find ways to make a system for metrics that can really point to what the issues are specifically with our small businesses. But I will leave it there. I think CM Avilés might have some questions.

(01:20:40)

Thank you, Chair. Good to see the administration. I apologize — I missed earlier so I may be asking duplicate questions. As you all know, street vendors are really important and I know you noted that Karina just started this Monday. I was curious to know what the current budget for the Office of Street Vendors is specifically and what does a fully staffed office actually look like?

(01:21:15)

Thank you, Council Member. We are happy to answer any questions, even if they are repeat questions. We will do all of the questions that you propose and present to us. On the budget for the office, we currently do not have a budget for the office itself. We did hire Karina, expecting that through this budget process — since the legislative requirement goes into effect in August of the next fiscal year — this would be part of the budget process. We are engaging in continued conversations with senior leadership in City Hall and OMB, and to get us started four months before the legislative requirement, we hired Karina as our executive director.

(01:21:58)

Do you anticipate — obviously a year is away, there is a lot happening and I know there is a lot of planning — do you anticipate providing additional lines from other agencies to support that work in the meantime?

(01:22:12)

So the benefit of having the Office of Street Vendor Services at SBS is that the team is now able to leverage all of the resources, teams and capacity that the agency already has. We have the hotline that exists — the 888-SBS-NYC — that any New Yorker can call to get connected with our services. We have the webpage. We also have our six-person outreach team. We have our seven business solution centers that are located in all five boroughs — the in-person locations where you can get access to our services. We have all this capacity and infrastructure built up.

The benefit of having the Office of Street Vendor Services, which the Council and Public Advocate Williams so thoughtfully embedded into the proposed legislation, is that it benefits from this entire ecosystem. We are in the middle of the budget process and I know that all agencies are discussing the upcoming needs they may have with the new licenses that are going to be issued, and also ensuring that unlicensed vendors currently are able to take advantage of the opportunity that the new licenses present to enter the formal economy.

(01:23:17)

Do you have a sense of what the core functions of this office will be?

(01:23:22)

Yes. You could think of it in three buckets. One would be access to resources and services. The second bucket would be development of curated street vendor-focused programming. The third bucket would be ensuring that our vendors are able to benefit from the historic new licenses that the street vendor community lobbied for and advocated for last year and early this year, and which the Council enacted into law by overriding the mayoral veto.

(01:23:54)

Thank you. I was so distracted by the buzzer. I felt like I was a game show host or something.

(01:23:59)

Continue.

(01:24:00)

Out of the room suddenly. Thank you for that. In terms of the earlier questioning, it really focused on all the ways of directing outreach. I think what we see across agencies is a real need — beyond the QR codes and the actual paper — for human-to-human contact to clarify all the processes. Obviously SBS has a small team and quite a large mandate, with thousands of small businesses who need real support every day, particularly in a hostile context where the federal government is going after people quite frankly. Is there going to be any additional allocation for that outreach effort related to the street vendor office?

(01:24:59)

Those are exactly the kinds of conversations we are having with City Hall and OMB on figuring out the right scope as the new licenses come out and as we build this office. The legislative requirement was later in August. We proactively decided to hire our executive director months in advance to start the work much earlier and help build the scoping of what this team can do and should be focused on in the next year.

(01:25:25)

Great. Is there going to be any overlap with — I guess MOYA — will you be able to double team on outreach efforts related to street vendors and also just at the intersection of what people need and their concerns?

(01:25:39)

Yeah. So we have in the past, and just this calendar year alone, partnered with SBS on four outreach events. I think as I mentioned, Karina is on day three, but we are looking forward to working with her. Also, just to ensure that — given the citywide lack of capacity — there is not overlap and that we are able to coordinate. So yeah, that is part of what our hope will be when we speak with her soon.

(01:26:08)

Great. Last thing, because I have you both here — on the business aspect, I think we continue to pursue and really want to stop the whole roller gate situation, which is going to really negatively impact our businesses across the City. So I just want to underscore that that legislation, while potentially well-meaning some years ago, needs to maybe stay in the past. So for the record, thank you.

I have a couple of questions for MOYA. I represent the 21st Council district. LaGuardia Airport is in my district. Recently, around the time when Trump was trying to eliminate TPS status for Haiti, we have quite a few airport workers — I am not sure if you are aware — they have to be badged. There is a badging process. So when countries are in limbo like that, you can get a badge for six months or twelve months. Each time you have to take time out of your day to go get rebadged. In this particular instance, individuals were badged for one month. So they had a month where they knew they could work and after that, no idea what was to happen.

When you talk about the fear and anxiety — and this has been going on since Trump took office in 2025, with consistent attempts to rescind lawful immigration status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants — how has MOYA sought to disseminate actionable information on these policy shifts to immigrant workers and small business owners? Does any of that information include any type of mental health assistance?

(01:28:06)

Multiple parts to your question, and a good question. I will just start with the work that we are currently doing under the Haitian response effort. Under MOYA, we have a program called the Haitian Response Initiative, which is made up of seven organizations that are embedded in Little Haiti. Part of the effort that we have done there is to provide service in the community and not wait for people to come to us. So we have been having in-person clinics throughout the period to provide different types of services. If I had a magic wand to be able to provide legal status to everybody, you better believe that I would wave it and ensure that that happened. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

So what we have done is provide people with a review of some pending applications, provide them with the most up-to-date information that they can have, and we have also been supporting and doing direct outreach in the community in Little Haiti. I know CM Rita Joseph tends to come to the immigration hearings. We have partnered with her in the past to provide information and direct legal services to individuals in her district. So that is part of what we try to do. We have been monitoring TPS loss not just for Haitians but for other countries as well. What we have been trying to do is affirmative outreach to the community, and especially with the Haitian Response Initiative because...

(01:29:38)

...there is an initiative specifically for Haitian New Yorkers providing direct legal services within their community. We do have a clinic coming up on May 28th that we are partnering with the Brooklyn Borough President on, to again provide an additional touch point. We are also monitoring the decision on TPS via the Supreme Court as well.

On the mental health piece — because multiple times both of you have said that anecdotally the fear and anxiety that individuals are facing is at an all-time high — yes, there are several interagency efforts that MOYA is a part of. We have worked closely with OMH. If I am not mistaken, there is forward-facing material as well in regards to access and to encourage folks to continue to not only access mental health services but also health services in general, to ensure that folks have that. We have also embedded that within the coalition and initiative that we have under the Haitian Response Initiative program, where we have brought in people to talk about the services with all seven providers so they could share that information widely as well.

As MOYA's most recent annual report notes, nationwide we know that immigrants — including undocumented populations — are tremendous contributors to the economy. What federal-level advocacy has MOYA engaged in, whether through Cities for Action or elsewhere, to champion policies that would mutually benefit the immigrant population and the City's economy as a whole?

(01:31:27)

Yes, there is work that we have done. I will just name the most recent one. On February 23, 2026, as you may know, DHS proposed a rule which would extend the wait time for work permits to 365 days and halt applications if the affirmative rate of asylum proceeding times exceeded 180 days. Because of that, we worked with City Hall to put together a comment to talk about how detrimental that would be for the City of New York. That is one example within the workforce space. There have been others that I do not have in front of me, but there have been multiple touch points that we have done. With Cities for Action, which is a program that MOYA oversees, we have also collaborated with them in the past to submit comments connected to detrimental impacts that would come because of federal policy.

(01:32:36)

Coming back to Small Business Week.

(01:32:41)

How does SBS engage with immigrant-owned small businesses during Small Business Week?

(01:32:47)

Small business week is a federal Small Business Administration designated week where the federal government engages in outreach across the country through their regional offices. We at SBS have expanded from the week to the month and we celebrate May as an entire small business month. As that being the focus, we have committed to helping organize four borough-based large-scale public engagement events. We are organizing that big expo at the end of the month and across the month there is a series of workshops and webinars related to financing opportunities and meeting the lenders that provide loans to small businesses. It is a full month of programming that we do at SBS, not just that week that the federal government does. To learn more about all of the ways in which people can engage and all the events that are taking place, it is nyc.gov/smallbizmonth.

(01:33:47)

Do you know off hand when this is going to take place? The four large public events?

(01:33:52)

My apologies. It is actually six borough-based engagements. They should be up on the website as soon as they are finalized. In many of the borough-based events, we are partnering with the local chambers as well. Either they are all there, and if one or two of them are still being finalized, they will be there the minute the partners all finalize those events.

(01:34:14)

I will turn it over to the Council member.

(01:34:17)

I just have quick questions around inspections and the assistance that our small businesses get with inspections. Can you walk us through how and when they use, I guess, the language line you were mentioning, for when an inspector comes into a small business?

(01:34:37)

Chair Encarnación, we are not the enforcement agency. Each enforcement agency has their own enforcement practices. Many of them also do have multilingual staff.

(01:34:50)

Have they asked you for support with inspections? Like if they know they are getting a big inspection and need support setting up for it?

(01:34:57)

We would actually not want to be anywhere near an inspection that takes place with a small business owner because it jeopardizes our relationship with the businesses. It takes time for them to develop trust with us, knowing that we in city government at SBS are out there for them. We are an educational resource for non-compliance. We are here with services. We are not folks in uniform. We are not folks they should be concerned about.

(01:35:20)

If they needed support, would MOIA be a support for them in that situation?

(01:35:27)

I was actually asking our language access team, but in general, yes. Just to take a step back so you have this as well: MOIA has affirmatively reached out to agencies under Local Law 30. Just this calendar year we have met with 40 agencies. As issues come up, we address them, so if that issue came to us we would handle it. I was just trying to get clarification on whether it has. I just do not have that yet. But we affirmatively reached out to provide support.

(01:35:58)

I think that is a smart way to look at it, because I am thinking about what happens if the language translation services were inaccurate for any reason. These things are extremely technical in some cases. I just wanted to understand if they would be absolved of whatever violation due to wrongly translated information. That is more or less what I was thinking of. But I know that we were joined by our borough president.

(01:36:27)

Go ahead.

(01:36:31)

Thank you very much.

(01:36:33)

Can I just add one clarification? Chair Encarnación, you mentioned vacancy rate. For Council District 8, we do know that the current vacancy rate hovers around 12.72%. In the last quarter it was at 13.16%, so it is showing some slight downward trend. But just because it is showing that there are fewer vacancies, it does not address who is replacing the vacant stores, or the stores that are closing, or all these other levels of questions that one could engage in.

(01:37:02)

Yeah, it is the Sonics and the McDonald's and Burger King that are replacing our small businesses.

(01:37:13)

Thank you so much. You are excused.

(01:37:18)

Okay. Now we have our borough president. >> Yes. >> Brad Hoylman-Sigal.

(01:37:42)

Good morning and thank you for joining.

(01:37:44)

You can begin when you are ready.

(01:37:46)

Thank you so much. Good afternoon, chairs and members of the committee. Thank you so much for convening this hearing. I am Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Manhattan Borough President, and I have the honor of representing 1.6 million New Yorkers, including half a million immigrants, as Manhattan Borough President. Manhattan has a long and storied history as a borough of immigrants. I do not need to tell you that. Its economy in particular was built by immigrants, as we all know, and runs on their entrepreneurship, their labor, and their tax contributions. Across New York City, immigrants own nearly half of our small businesses. They make up the overwhelming majority of workers in care, home care, food service, hospitality, transportation, and major parts of our construction workforce.

And yet, as you well know, the federal government is dismantling the freedoms and infrastructure that let immigrant New Yorkers live here, work here, raise families here, and contribute here. The cost will be borne by every New Yorker. We have all seen the harms of ICE operations on our streets and in our respective boroughs. Less visible but no less consequential is the restructuring of federal agencies far outside of DHS — housing, food assistance, employment authorization, tax administration and public records — into instruments of immigration enforcement. Each of those shifts transfers costs to New York City.

(01:39:16)

Nowhere is that more clear than in housing. In April, our office submitted formal comments opposing HUD's proposed rule that would effectively force mixed-status families out of federally assisted housing. If implemented, this rule could displace roughly 11,000 New Yorkers, including approximately 5,000 children. In Manhattan alone, hundreds of families and more than a thousand children could be impacted. Families who have spent years complying with federal rules would face an impossible set of choices: family separation, displacement, or homelessness. Manhattan's average asking rent has now reached approximately $5,348 a month. The Section 8 waitlist is closed. Public housing waitlists have been functionally closed for years. For these families, there is nowhere else to go.

HUD claims this rule would free up resources for other households. Its own analysis shows just the opposite. Mixed-status households often generate higher effective rents because ineligible family members pay market-adjacent rates. Removing those households is projected to cost New York housing authorities between $48 million and $57 million in annual revenue, at the exact moment NYCHA faces an astounding $80 billion capital deficit and a $791 million operating gap. The downstream costs are even greater. Families forced from federally assisted housing will enter shelter systems. Hospitals will absorb housing-related health crises. NYCHA staff will be pulled away from mold remediation, lead abatement, elevator repair, and heat restoration to carry out immigration verification and reporting requirements. Shelter costs alone could impose additional costs of between $330 million and $1.27 billion on New York City with no federal reimbursement.

The same pattern is emerging in food security. More than 1.8 million New Yorkers rely on SNAP, including roughly 500,000 children. As of April 1, in response to changes in federal law, New York State has begun removing SNAP eligibility from entire categories of legally present non-citizens, including refugees, people granted asylum, survivors of human trafficking, and survivors of domestic violence. These are people the federal government itself granted humanitarian protection. They are now being stripped of food assistance. Beyond those direct cuts, mixed-status households who remain eligible are disenrolling out of fear that participation will expose family members to enforcement. Food pantries are reporting surging demand. Community providers are being forced to backfill what was once a federal entitlement. Bodegas, grocery stores, and small food businesses lose consumer spending when federal nutrition dollars disappear from local circulation.

The chilling effects extend beyond housing and food. Workers are hesitating to report wage theft. Families are delaying medical care. Parents are avoiding benefits enrollment for US citizen children. Eligible residents are declining to file taxes or interact with public systems because they no longer trust that the information they provide will remain within the agencies that collected it. Local government cannot fully offset the assault from the federal government, but we can and we must do everything in our power to mitigate the damage and protect immigrant New Yorkers, upon whom our economic infrastructure so directly depends.

I urge you to consider the following steps. First, conduct a full audit of the direct and downstream impacts of these policies on New York City. Second, coordinate multilingual outreach, making clear that benefit participation by eligible household members does not, under city policy, expose family members to immigration enforcement. Third, expand city investment in immigrant legal services. Fourth, build protections against data transfer between city agencies and federal immigration enforcement.

I am pleased to share that my office is opening an immigrant welcome center at our northern Manhattan office at 125th and Amsterdam. This center will provide, we hope, a single trusted intake point for any Manhattanite, providing walk-in legal referrals, multilingual benefit navigation, know-your-rights materials, tenant protections, and more. Thanks to the Queens Borough President for the concept that we are adopting here in Manhattan. Our city's economy was built by immigrants. It is currently being dismantled by federal policy. We have a moral and fiscal obligation to build a local firewall that protects workers, entrepreneurs, and families who keep New York running. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I really appreciate it.

(01:44:28)

No, we thank you for being here.

(01:44:31)

Thank you.

(01:44:33)

Thank you for your advocacy over the years, especially for your support and innovation in supporting our small businesses. I would love to get a copy of those recommendations that you called out. Also, from your office's vantage point, what we heard from SBS and MOIA is that we cannot truly quantify the impacts because we are not actually getting the data that we need to quantify. Do you have any ideas about how these businesses are really being impacted by the Trump administration's immigration policies?

(01:45:11)

That is a terrific suggestion. There is that old expression: you cannot manage what you do not measure. I completely agree that data collection is part of the case we make — you as legislators and me as an advocate working alongside you in that regard.

(01:45:30)

Thank you very much.

(01:45:31)

I appreciate it. Thank you for coming. Have a good one.

(01:45:40)

I now open the hearing for public testimony. I remind members of the public that this is a government proceeding and that decorum shall be observed at all times. As such, members of the public shall remain silent at all times. The witness table is reserved for people who wish to testify. No video recording or photography is allowed from the witness table. Further, members of the public may not present audio or video recordings as testimony, but may submit transcripts of such recordings to the Sergeant-at-Arms for inclusion in the hearing record.

If you wish to speak at today's hearing, please fill out an appearance card with the Sergeant-at-Arms and wait to be recognized. When recognized, you will have two minutes to speak on today's oversight hearing topic: economic impacts of federal immigration policy changes. If you have a written statement or additional written testimony you wish to submit for the record, please provide a copy of that testimony to the Sergeant-at-Arms. You may also email written testimony to testimony@council.nyc.gov within 72 hours of the close of this hearing. Audio and video recordings will not be accepted.

For in-person panelists, please come up to the table once your name has been called. Now I will call our first in-person panel: Mark Caserta, Van Zyo, Arlette Zapata, and Ben Gutman. We can begin with Mark.

(01:47:46)

Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Mark Caserta and I am vice president of small business support at the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. Thank you for the opportunity. In the interest of time, I want to skip past anything about the struggles of small businesses. I think we all know that. But I do want to tell you that since October of 2020, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with four other borough chambers, has conducted extensive door-to-door outreach to small businesses throughout the city through the New York City Small Business Resource Network. SBRN staff have visited more than 58,000 small businesses citywide and provided individualized no-cost assistance to over 18,000 businesses. We have a direct, on-the-ground perspective of the challenges facing small businesses across the city.

Earlier this year, our SBRN team conducted a door-to-door survey of Brooklyn small businesses. Among respondents, 65% reported being affected by tariffs and 56% indicated they had raised prices as a direct result of these increased costs. In addition to the tariff question, we asked business owners whether immigration enforcement or the fear of such enforcement had impacted their operations. Across Brooklyn, approximately 30% of respondents reported experiencing negative effects related to immigration enforcement or

(01:49:19)

fear thereof. However, this figure varies significantly by neighborhood. In Sunset Park, 79% of the surveyed businesses reported being affected and in Bay Ridge the figure was 45%, which reflects a mix of businesses, both Arab and non-Arab owned. I also want to note that nearly all the Arab-owned businesses that we spoke with reported significant tariff increases and expressed that they could not pass these costs on to customers who themselves are facing financial strain.

Beyond our survey data, our team has gathered anecdotal evidence during outreach. Business owners have reported difficulty retaining immigrant employees. I also want to add that

(01:50:04)

you may continue.

(01:50:05)

Thank you. Additionally, many businesses have experienced declines in foot traffic and sales. In several instances earlier in the current administration, our staff visited immigrant-owned businesses and, upon asking for the owner, observed employees retreating and hiding out of fear that we were immigration enforcement officials. So it feels very real. None of this is happening in a vacuum. Business owners are already navigating exceptionally challenging times. I also want to add something that CM Ayala had said. We are calling for the repeal of Local Law 75. There are thousands and thousands of small businesses who have illegal roll gates. This is a ticking time bomb and we really need to repeal the law as soon as possible. Thank you.

(01:50:55)

Thank you for your testimony. Next.

(01:50:58)

Good afternoon, Council members. Thank you for the time to testify today. My name is Van. I am the community organizer at MXCA, a community-based organization in Central Brooklyn that has served immigrant, Latin and indigenous communities for over 25 years. As an organization that provides direct services to the immigrant community, we have seen the effects that these federal policy changes have created. Last year, MXCA was able to serve over a thousand community members in legal services, and over a third of those services were on completing work authorization applications.

With the recent federal changes that this current administration has created, we see how it has greatly impacted the working-class immigrant community. Having to now pay a $12 fee to maintain an asylum application pending, while the federal government is slowing down the review of applications, is unjust. On top of these policy changes around asylum, the large presence of ICE in immigrant communities has created an immense amount of fear where our community members feel immobilized to the point that they do not feel safe enough to go to work. We have seen areas like Sunset Park, which used to be busy with pedestrians going shopping at local and nearby businesses, start to become more empty.

After talking to some local street vendors and food trucks, they have mentioned how business has also drastically decreased because of all this recent fear. There needs to be continuous protection and support for immigrant communities to access their work safely, to access unemployment support — which is something they are often not eligible for despite being a huge backbone of our local economy — and more access to legal services where they do not have to pay absurd fees to merely survive in the city. Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

(01:52:40)

Thank you for your testimony. Next.

(01:52:44)

Good morning. My name is Ben Gutman. I am the executive director of the Queens Economic Development Corporation. We are in the business of making Queens thrive and every year we work to support more than 3,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses in various capacities across the borough. Despite being the birthplace of the leader of our federal government, Queens finds itself squarely in the crosshairs of this administration's harsh and ill-conceived immigration policy. Queens is the most diverse urban community on the globe. 48% of the population is foreign born. 55% speak a language other than English at home. By most estimates, the number of those languages spoken reaches well into the triple digits. This diversity is the reason we have the most vibrant neighborhoods in the world and of course why we have the most delicious culinary scene anywhere to be found. But federal immigration policy is quieting those neighborhoods and devastating the restaurants and other street-level businesses that call Queens home.

Since ICE activity began to accelerate this past fall, nearly every business owner I have spoken to in our most heavily immigrant communities has reported an anecdotal decrease in foot traffic and accompanying revenue. Last November, we sent our team into the field in Jackson Heights and Corona to survey local businesses on this effect. The results were striking. 79% of businesses have reported a decrease in sales and foot traffic. 39% described it as a major decrease. 22% reported that employees have missed work or expressed fear of coming in because of ICE activity. 18% of businesses have changed hours, canceled events, or altered operations. A further 11% are considering doing so. Of those who reported a loss of revenue, 84% have lost more than $1,000. 7% have reported a loss greater than $10,000.

$1,000 may not seem like that much to a business at first, but many of these businesses are street vendors. $1,000 in lost revenue can be their share of that month's rent. It is the supplies needed to staff up for the next big catering opportunity or the flight home to visit family. While New York has been spared the disturbing, heavy-handed enforcement that so deeply scarred a city like Minneapolis, the fear alone...

(01:54:47)

You can continue.

(01:54:48)

Thank you. ...is often enough to take its toll. An ICE agent is spotted in the community, or sometimes not even. Then rumors begin to swirl. From Instagram to churches, WhatsApp groups to apartment hallways, the fear grounds the neighborhood to a halt. Nobody is shopping. People are staying home from work. Street vendors and storefronts close. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in immediate economic damage and countless more in lost opportunities and lost sleep.

QEDC operates Corona Plaza Market, a leading model for safe, community-focused street vending. I saw a few of the vendors here earlier. Due to the fear of ICE activity, we shut down the market three times this past winter. It was painful and it was not always popular with every vendor, but we refused to facilitate creating a target for ICE agents who may want to harass this community. When combined with the literal ice from our frigid winter, this was a very challenging season for our vendors. Not every business made it through these down months. And this is just one market in one neighborhood in one borough. To our knowledge, thankfully, no one has been raided in Corona Plaza yet. But the fear is enough. And unfortunately, with this administration, fear seems to be the point. Thank you to the chair and her staff for the leadership on this issue in their own backyard and thank you everybody for your time.

(01:55:59)

Thank you. Next.

(01:56:01)

Hello. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, chairs and members of the committee. My name is Arlet Sepeda and I am the interim executive director of La Colmena in Staten Island. Colmena is a nonprofit community-based organization that works with day laborers, domestic workers, and other low-wage immigrant workers. Our mission is to empower them through organizing, education, culture and equitable economic development. Across our community, we are seeing a growing level of fear. Many immigrant families are afraid to leave their homes, whether it is to go to work, to shop at local businesses, or participate in daily life. They are instead sending their children to get essential supplies, putting them at risk. This fear is not abstract. It has real economic consequences. Small businesses in our neighborhoods are experiencing a decline in customers. When community members stay home, local restaurants, shops and service providers lose vital income. These are businesses that often operate on thin margins, and even a small drop in revenue can be devastating. At the same time, small businesses are losing workers. Immigrant workers are essential to the functioning of many industries such as hospitality and construction. When workers feel unsafe or are forced to stay home, businesses struggle...

(01:57:35)

...to operate, reduce hours or even close. It is also important to recognize that immigrants are not only workers, they are business owners. Many of them are entrepreneurs and are facing the same fears and instabilities, forcing them to scale back or close their doors. This leads to the loss of income not only for them but for their employees and families. As a result, we are seeing increased economic instability across our communities. Families are struggling to pay rent, afford food and meet basic needs. We urge the Council to recognize the harmful impacts of the federal immigration policy changes and continue to invest in protections and resources that support our immigrant community and small businesses. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of Staten Island.

(01:58:28)

Oh, thank you. Thank you for coming in from Staten Island.

(01:58:33)

I just have one thing to say. I think every borough is the most diverse and cultural and has the best food. We all say it. So I am going to say it for the Bronx and for Manhattan.

(01:58:44)

Queens is the world's borough, though. I am just saying.

(01:58:47)

We will see. We will see.

(01:58:49)

But I do have one quick question for the entire panel. Thank you for the work that you do. You are really at the front lines. Do you coordinate with MOIA or SBS in any way to help give them your on-the-ground actual survey work and share what you are hearing? How has that coordination or collaboration been?

(01:59:14)

We work under contract. The Small Business Resource Network is under contract with SBS. So we do on-the-ground small business work and we share that. They see our metrics all the time. I do not know whether we have shared the results of that survey or not, but...

(01:59:32)

I would recommend sharing it with...

(01:59:34)

Yeah. Yeah.

(01:59:35)

With MOIA, we work closely, giving know-your-rights workshops. Also, we have done a couple of small business know-your-rights workshops around what businesses can do if an ICE raid were to occur, explaining and giving more information around public versus private spaces and additional resources. We also try to do policy updates as often as we can because there are so many ongoing changes and there are different ways that they can impact businesses. That is sort of how we have been going about it.

(02:00:08)

Yeah, and SBS has been a wonderful partner of ours in both Jackson Heights and Corona. I would love to do more work with MOIA as well.

(02:00:15)

La Colmena is the grantee of the Neighborhood 360 grant by SBS and we have an amazing corridor invigoration program which included the launch of a fellowship that focuses on a marketing campaign for the corridor. So we are very close with Small Business Services and the team at SBS has done numerous tours of the corridor. They are really connected to small businesses and we are breaking down that barrier. With MOIA, we are one of their immigrant resource providers.

(02:00:48)

How do you think we on the city level can help our specifically immigrant-owned small businesses survive these tumultuous times? What can we be doing?

(02:01:02)

The problem is in Washington for the most part. That is the biggest piece. I will say I have been very... I do not know if "pleased" is the right word, but very heartwarmed, I guess, to see the response from local electeds. Both on the City Council level and the borough president's team, as we have been dealing with some of these closures at Corona Plaza, they have been incredible partners. I just wanted to add that I was here for the sanctuary laws. That is another way that we can protect our businesses, by enforcing the sanctuary laws and making people feel safe, ensuring there is due process and not colluding with federal agents, making sure that there are accountability measures and that rights and due process are respected.

(02:01:49)

Okay.

(02:01:52)

I will just add what you would expect to hear from the Chamber of Commerce, and that is to reduce costs and regulations for small businesses...

(02:01:58)

...especially those immigrant-owned businesses. And again, roll gates. Roll gates.

(02:02:03)

We are on the roller gates. We are working it out. We are trying to roll it out before it gets implemented, but we are on it.

(02:02:12)

Thank you.

(02:02:13)

Thank you.

(02:02:13)

You are welcome.

(02:02:15)

The next panel: Rosario Troncoso, Isabel Rosario, Martha Hera and Sally Weathers. You can begin.

(02:02:57)

Oh, you are waiting. Okay. I am practicing. She knows me. I am trying. Thank you. You may begin.

(02:03:57)

Good morning. I am sorry. Good morning. My name is Rosario Troncoso. I am a member of the board of directors of the Street Vendor Project. I have been a street vendor in the City of New York for the last six years, living and working in Queens, New York. Due to the pandemic, being a street vendor was my only option in order for me to survive. I lost my job. I used to clean houses. I used to clean the homes of families and people. Due to my immigration status, I do not have a US work permit or a green card to work legally in the US. My immigration situation is difficult. That is why it is very hard for me to obtain a job.

(02:05:27)

Street vendors are very small businesses here in New York City and every day street vendors interact with different government agencies. Some of these government agencies are local municipal agencies that are supported by the federal government, and also the federal government itself.

(02:06:02)

Okay. Street...

(02:06:34)

I just want to clarify something. Yes.

(02:06:45)

We have seen immigration raids especially on Canal Street and also in other parts of New York City. The federal authorities and immigration enforcement are looking at us. They have their eyes on us all the time. Not only me but also my workmates. We need to be prepared to face the stress that immigration enforcement is causing us. That is what we are requesting from the City Council: that you approve and secure the Street Vendor Project so we can have the necessary resources to continue our work, to continue with education and to reach other street vendors who need this information in New York City to protect themselves and to know their rights. This is taking place right now.

(02:07:54)

As a street vendor, we are receiving these folders that you see here. The folders have the name of the Street Vendor Project and the Urban Justice Center. They are written in different languages. Some of those languages are English, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Bengali, the language spoken in Bangladesh, and French. They also teach how to manage your business.

(02:08:56)

Just one second.

(02:09:30)

They teach us how to administer a business and how to understand the rights of immigrant New Yorkers who are here. The municipal agencies are not providing these resources to us or to others and they are not providing information on how to protect ourselves from different situations, for example illegal registrations. What she means is that a lot of people are selling fake permits. They are not real. So with those permits, you cannot do anything. They just care about taking money. The Street Vendor Project is the agency that is providing this information to us.

(02:10:29)

Reform package. Thank you.

(02:10:43)

Okay. Thank you. We are also here to request from all of you to invest in the implementation of the street vendor reform package. Please be sure that DCWP and SBS have the necessary resources to implement this package, because this package should be approved and implemented in an effective way. Thank you very much for...

(02:11:12)

...your time. I would like to ask for your help because not all street vendors have the benefit of a work permit in the United States or a green card. So it is very hard for all of us to work without those documents. We have faced difficulties with police and other government agencies and we never know when ICE may come to us at any moment. I would really like to appreciate all your help and cooperation so that you can approve this package.

(02:12:18)

Thank you for your help. Thank you.

(02:12:34)

Miss Thomas, I am not sure you want me to translate again, but it is the same information that was written by her.

(02:12:41)

Okay. Or she can say what she thinks. It is up to her. Okay.

(02:12:58)

...

(02:13:41)

Okay. My name is Isabel Rosario and I am a...

(02:13:44)

...member of the board of directors of the Street Vendor Project. I have been working as a street vendor in the City of New York for the last 18 years, living in Brooklyn and working on 50th Street and Fifth Avenue. I have been working as a street vendor since I came from the Dominican Republic to the United States. I remember the first day when I was selling things. I was selling something in Dominican Spanish called piragua, which is like shaved ice with flavored water. I sold around $247 worth and I was really happy. I got a little excited about that.

I am a street vendor with a very long and experienced history and I have been a member of the Street Vendor Project since the year 2012. I really need your help and cooperation with this situation. I have been working for many years in this kind of work and I am very experienced, but we also need your help and support. Me and my colleagues, including my colleague here and other street vendors, go together to different parts of New York including Sunset Park and 50th Street and Fifth Avenue and we are sharing these flyers with other street vendors and people who need them, because we can use them to provide information that people may not know and they can learn what is happening with the Street Vendor Project.

I wanted to say thank you to all of you for your support. I am a Dominican woman and very proud of my country and of who I am. I am also thankful to be here at the New York City Council hearing with all of you. I am grateful for what you do for us and what you are going to do in the future. Thank you so much for everything. Thank you.

(02:17:36)

Okay.

(02:18:25)

Good morning. My name is Marta and I am an organizer for a community organization called La Sonas. This is a network of immigrant women from different Spanish-speaking countries and other countries. Some of them are very hard workers and they are owners and CEOs of small businesses and they also work as street vendors.

(02:19:35)

I wanted to be clear about something. All of these immigration tactics used by the federal government and President Trump are not only affecting the immigrant community, they are also affecting the economy. Our city, New York City, is being affected very badly at its economic base. Almost half of the small businesses in this city are owned by immigrants, around 48%. This is not a minor data point. It means that immigrants are not in an isolated sector. They are a structural part of the local economy. That is why I want to express this and say it right now.

(02:21:06)

Okay. And we were talking before about the business owners who were street vendors. But if we are talking about the street vendors themselves, they even more than that. Around 90% of immigrants are street vendors here. They are feeding people. They are feeding their families. They are supporting their families and they are giving light to our streets in the City of New York. However, these workers and these small business owners are operating under constant fear. What I mean by constant fear is they are very scared of these immigration raids and ICE, and this is really terrible to live like this.

(02:22:09)

Okay, they are afraid to go to work. They are afraid to use public transportation. They are even afraid to use their own cell phones. They are afraid to be detained and they are afraid to be criminalized. This fear is not abstract. Okay. When a person is living in constant fear, the person cannot have stability in their work. Right? If the person does not work, the person does not get any earnings. If the person does not have any earnings, the person does not consume anything. If they do not consume anything, do you know what this will cause? It will cause businesses to close because they are not consuming anything. This is very simple and it is very serious what is happening. This is what is happening to us. It is a very big fear. It is a very big effect.

(02:23:50)

And this will mean less trust and less economic participation. We will be more isolated. This will also cause more businesses, even small businesses, to close. And I am going to say with all clarity, this is not only an immigration problem. This is a problem of public health. It is a problem of economic stability. It is a problem of economic stability for all of New York City. The small businesses are not failing on their own. They are being pushed away and they are failing because of the structural conditions that are there, because of the fear they are living in and because of the uncertainty. When half of the economy of these small businesses in this city is dependent on immigrants, risking this group is affecting the entire City of New York.

(02:25:33)

Okay. If New York City wants to sustain its economy, it should not sustain the economy by criminalizing the people who are supporting this economy, building this economy, or the ones who want to construct and build the economy every day. We need political help to protect this stability. We do not need people who will destroy it. We need security. We need safety in order to work. Okay? We do not need constant fear. Okay. And we need to recognize something very important. It is also very essential. New York without immigrants will not work. It is very simple. New York City without immigrants will not work. Thank you for your help.

(02:26:39)

New York without immigrants would not exist.

(02:26:42)

Yes. Yes. Exactly.

(02:26:43)

Translate.

(02:26:44)

Yes. Thank you.

(02:26:54)

She was wondering if she can ask a question about something that she heard about the street vendors. Can she ask a question?

(02:27:15)

I will come back around. I am going to let the last panelist come and then she can ask a question.

(02:27:20)

Okay. You are the last panelist, right? The last one, right? Okay. So after you finish, we can ask the question for her.

(02:27:33)

You may begin.

(02:27:34)

Okay.

(02:27:35)

Hello.

(02:27:37)

Good afternoon. My name is Sally Weathers and I am the lead organizer of the Street Vendor Project. I would like to thank Chair Encarnación and Chair Thomas-Henry and the committee members for the opportunity to testify today. As the only organization that exclusively serves street vendors in New York City, SVP is the centralized hub for this underserved population, providing critical small business and legal services to vendors since 2001. We respectfully request support from the New York City Council to sustain and expand our essential know your rights education for immigrant street vendors. A growing workforce of more than 23,000 entrepreneurs makes a living from the streets and sidewalks of New York City. According to a 2024 report by Immigration Research Initiative in collaboration with SVP, 96% of street vendors are immigrants. 81% vend as their main source of income and 65% live in a household with one or more

(02:28:38)

children. Vendors are at an increased risk in the current political environment because they work in public spaces. Many lack access to licenses and permits and are in urgent need of outreach and advocacy to make sure they know their rights, in languages that they know and from people that they trust. This dramatically increases the need for SVP services as the organization provides accessible multilingual outreach and education to vendors. From July 1st, 2025 to March 1st, 2026, just from support from this Council initiative alone, SVP has engaged 392 individual vendors, provided know your rights trainings attended by 161 immigrant vendors, and trained 184 volunteers to support with outreach. We are a small team, only six outreach staff, but collectively we speak seven languages on staff to ensure we meet street vendor needs.

With the Council's support, we have created vendor-specific immigration know your rights materials in seven languages: Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Bangla, Wolof, French and English. Our multilingual team distributes these resources to immigrant vendors through weekly street outreach to vendor carts and trucks, commissary garages, and the places where vendors work directly, in order to equip vendors with the tools they need to protect themselves while vending in public space should they have an interaction with immigration enforcement. We also connect them to legal resources and emergency planning kits. We distribute whistles so vendors can warn each other when ICE is in the area and we add vendors to our language-based text chats so they can share and receive on-the-ground updates. Our outreach model prioritizes one-on-one conversations with vendors, empowering vendors to become community ambassadors who share knowledge with their customers as they have deep connections themselves in their neighborhoods. Additionally, because we are membership-based, when we engage with vendors, we are engaging them in our community and collecting emergency contact information should a situation arise. Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

(02:30:52)

Thank you.

(02:30:58)

Miss Thomas, she does not have the question written. Is it possible to send it by email?

(02:31:04)

Yes, please.

(02:31:05)

A member of my staff will be here shortly so I can direct her to the staff to help address it.

(02:31:10)

Oh, Miss Thomas, something else. She has an English translation of her testimony, the one she read in Spanish, so she can also send it to all of you. The translation was done very well in English.

(02:31:23)

Yes, she can submit it to testimony@council.nyc.gov. Gracias.

(02:31:35)

Thank you very much. Thank you for everything she is saying.

(02:31:47)

Thank you. Our next panel: Ayan Kim, Carolyn Cohen, Jackie Harrington and Hassan Shafiquilla. Thank you. You may begin.

(02:32:36)

My name is Ayan Kim. I serve as the director of programs at the Asian-American Federation. We are a citywide umbrella organization working with 70 member partner organizations. For many Asian immigrant-owned businesses, for all immigrant-owned businesses, these immigration policy changes compounded with enforcement anxiety, misinformation and lack of trusted legal guidance are affecting workforce participation, business operations, consumer behavior and overall the health of neighborhood commercial corridors. Across immigrant commercial corridors, declining foot traffic is weakening daily revenue. When families are afraid to leave their home, access benefits or seek services because of concerns for their own safety, local businesses are feeling the impact through empty sidewalks and reduced spending.

We are also seeing financial warning signs in the macroeconomy. One of our partners, Renaissance EDC, has told me that their delinquency rates for small business loans have risen back to levels seen during the COVID pandemic period. Although the macroeconomy on paper says the stock market is going well and the economy is going well, that is not the lives of immigrant business owners or our neighbors today. Last year, the Asian-American Federation and our partners heard significant concern regarding I-9 audits. There was no outreach, no in-language information, no clarification about what exactly the business owner's responsibilities are and how to resolve issues if they have not had I-9s ready. In lieu of this reliable information and outreach, business organizations organized seminars on their own to help their members, and those who could not even do that reached out to the Asian-American Federation for legal guidance.

In addition, many longtime skilled workers left the workforce or self-deported last year. This is especially significant in the Asian community where a lot of business owners are working with employees who may have entered the US legally or with documentation but later fell out of status and did not really see an opportunity to correct themselves or know where to seek help. This kind of anxiety and fear in our community can only be mediated through a trusted community infrastructure. Through our Rapid Immigrant Support and Empowerment Network, which is also called the RISE network, the Asian-American Federation is coordinating rapid response with Asian-led organizations to provide immigration legal referrals, know your rights education and case management in the language and settings our communities trust. We request the Council to sustain this work and support us by increasing funding for the legal services for AAPI communities initiative that funds the RISE network. Last year it was at around $2 million. This year we are asking for $3.5 million in fiscal year 2027. This will be a targeted investment from the Council in trusted legal access, accurate information and rapid response capacity that helps stabilize Asian immigrant families, workers, small businesses and the commercial corridors that they anchor. Thank you so much.

(02:35:33)

Thank you.

(02:35:39)

Good afternoon. I am Hassan Shafiquilla from the Legal Aid Society. I am a supervising attorney in our law reform unit and I used to be the head of our immigration practice during the first Trump administration. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My written testimony will address work permits, civil immigration fines, H-1B fees, fees under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Small Business Administration loan forms and warrantless arrests. But in my two minutes, I will focus on just a few things.

On I-9 audits, we are concerned about the difficulty in advising people about what is happening with their work permit given the termination of Temporary Protected Status, but then litigation bringing TPS back into play, stays from the Supreme Court, the back and forth termination of humanitarian parole, reduced validity periods for work permits and the elimination of extensions. I think it will be really important for the City to provide guidance to small businesses around each of these categories, like TPS countries and humanitarian parole, and at any given moment what is happening with work permit validity.

The second thing, and I am flagging this in particular for the Council members' constituent liaisons: there are civil immigration fines that the Trump administration is assessing against people. These are fines that have been on the books since 1996 but no president other than Trump has used them. They used them during the first administration and now this one. Up to $1.8 million per person for failure to depart after a removal order, which is significant because it only applies if you are willfully failing to depart. But some people have a reason to be here. Someone might be here with an order of supervision from ICE, seeking relief, or have deferred action as a special immigrant juvenile. Many of these fines are unlawful but people are getting hit with them anyway. We are litigating this with some national partners in the District of Massachusetts, hoping to get a preliminary injunction next week. You might be getting questions from constituents. I just want to let you know we put together a website, noimmigrationfines.org, where people can get practice advisories and sample opposition briefs both for unrepresented people and for attorneys. I know I am out of time but I will just flag two more things. We are hearing a

(02:37:50)

lot about the fear in communities in terms of the warrantless arrests that are going on and people are afraid to go to stores and walk to their jobs. We are litigating that together with the New York Civil Liberties Union and Make the Road New York, hoping to get a preliminary injunction in that case hopefully next month. And then finally, I wanted to flag... I think that was all. My last thing before I stop is I work part-time in a bakery as a baker and we have a roll gate, so we are also very keen on local law 75. So anything you can do, thank you.

(02:38:23)

Thank you so much. Please do not change your roll gate. We are working on it.

(02:38:29)

You may proceed.

(02:38:30)

Good afternoon. Thank you so much, Chair Thomas-Henry and Chair Encarnación for the opportunity to testify today. Carlen Cowan, pronouns they/them. I am the chief policy and public affairs officer at CPC, the Chinese-American Planning Council. We serve 80,000 Asian-American and immigrant New Yorkers in all five boroughs each year. We are proud members of the Asian-American Federation as well as the RISE network. Our written testimony covers a number of the issues that have already been brought up today. But with the time I have, I want to tell you a quick story about one of our community members.

One of our kids in our afterschool program, a six-year-old. We learned that her father, a deliverista, had been detained by ICE. He had missed a routine check-in because he had been hit by a car while on his delivery route and ICE came to his house and detained him afterwards. Through the RISE network, we were able to actually represent him with our own in-house attorney who is Mandarin and Spanish trilingual and we were able to offer wraparound support to the entire family, because as you can imagine it was incredibly traumatizing for our kiddo and for her mom who has her own immigration case. In addition to filing a habeas for the dad, working with ICE to get the appointments in language and going back and forth, we were also able to offer mental health support, support with extra child care, food and clothing for the mom and our kiddo. The kiddo recently wrote a letter to the judge that said, "Please let my dad out of jail." You can only imagine the mental health impact of that.

We are also really pleased to share that we won his release and the right to remain in the United States very recently and that is only possible through the RISE network. The need is so much greater than what we can offer, so that is why we are standing with the Asian-American Federation asking for an increase to $3.5 million this year. I also want to mention that the trans and queer network is putting out a new initiative asking for immigrant LGBTQ legal services specifically, which we are also supporting. Thank you for the work that you are doing and thank you for your support of immigrant New Yorkers.

(02:40:48)

Thank you. You may begin.

(02:40:53)

This is my first time using this, so I apologize. First and foremost, I want to say I am very transparent and I hope that I do not offend anybody with the language that I use, but this is the language that I am going to use. I think one of the issues that we have here in New York City that I have experienced so far is pertaining to people not knowing their immigration statuses. Unfortunately, the federal government has sealed records from some immigrants who do not know that they are immigrants, especially when they are adopted into American families, which of course causes a lot of problems and confusion for when they believe that they are actually a citizen when they are classified federally or state-wise as not.

In my experience, now knowing personally that I was an immigrant but all my life for 40 years believing that I was a United States citizen, there have been a lot of issues with my employment, my housing and my community in general. In that particular instance, I came to New York City hoping for a better opportunity and also a better understanding, which I have gotten. Unfortunately, during that time, I have been human trafficked. I have been raped. I have had directed energy weapons used against me, which are listed in US patents on the United Nations website if you want to look them up. I have had a very horrible experience and it has trickled down not just from the federal government but into the Department of Education, the Department of Social Services, and the nonprofit organizations that are supposed to be here to help immigrants and United States citizens. In housing and public assistance in general, there has been a lot of fraud on my name since I have gotten here through the Department of Social Services.

People like to throw somebody's name around. Yusef — I do not know him and I am not speaking as if he is an issue in this. However, unfortunately, some of the staff members in social services have mentioned his name when I felt that they were doing abuses of their authority. That is an issue for me considering that they are not handling their conduct properly in that particular aspect.

As my last name being Harrington, I really was hoping that my experience here — since it was founded by Harringtons — would be a better experience. Unfortunately, I have not had that experience here and I am still continuing not to have that experience here. However, I am learning the intricacies of this particular area and I just wanted to put that in as my testimony. I will educate myself better on the language that I should be using here and I will definitely be emailing my interpretation of that to the testimony email that you gave us. Thank you.

(02:44:06)

No problem. Thank you for your testimony today. Behind you, I have a staffer if you would like to speak with someone about what you are going through that can help you. Appreciate you.

(02:44:18)

Any questions?

(02:44:19)

I just want to thank you all for really supporting the folks that are going through this on the ground. I know we are trying to get as many resources out there and trying to increase as much as we can. Unfortunately, this budget season has been a little bit tricky for us as a city. I know that my colleagues have all been kind of threading the needle when it comes to immigration and small businesses and housing and how we do our workforce development and all of these things, and understanding how interconnected these issues are and really speaking on it during this budget process. So I am hoping that we can get some relief for you all and for the people that you serve.

(02:45:05)

Yes. Thank you. And I like when people ask for what they want. Thank you.

(02:45:16)

We have one more in-person testifier. Roberto Bear. Roberto, you may begin when you are ready.

(02:45:43)

Hi, good afternoon, Council members. My name is Roberto Beltree. I am the son of two immigrants from Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. My parents started businesses in our neighborhood and now I have the great honor of having my own business in Sunset Park. I came out today to advocate for the reversal of Local Law 75 of 2009, which states businesses in New York have to change our security gates from solid gates to ones with 70% visibility by July 1st. That is just 55 days away. This ruling was proposed in 2009 when I was a junior in high school. I was not paying attention to the City Council. I went through a full year of finalizing architectural drawings, having the Department of Buildings inspect my spot, pass us — all that stuff. Nobody ever mentioned it at all. It was my neighbor who told me about it just six weeks ago.

My neighborhood is majority immigrant, a community right now that is hurting. An estimate for my small storefront was $3,500. My neighbor, who is a Mexican immigrant, had an estimate of $5,000. As you said, half of our businesses are led by immigrants. The city is asking thousands of immigrants like my neighbors to pay these gate companies thousands — that is millions of dollars — out of our communities in just 55 days. This ruling is going to affect thousands of businesses all over the five boroughs like me who are just trying to survive. I have only made it to my second year because I have the privilege of operating my business out of a home that my family owns. If it were not for that, I would be gone. A cost this high will cause some to close. These are all people who have

(02:47:43)

invested in their communities and their city. Every day a reversal of this ruling is not announced, other businesses are deciding to waste thousands of dollars because of the anxiety that this is creating. This is not just a financial loss though. This is a cultural loss as well. Because if we just grandfather these existing gates, we are also killing future murals. I spent thousands of dollars commissioning an artist to create a mural on my gate. If we just grandfather these gates, that is going to stop any murals from happening in the future. So please reverse Local Law 75. Thank you.

(02:48:25)

We hear you. We hear you.

(02:48:27)

Yes. I texted my co-sponsors — there are three of us that share this legislation that we are proposing, four now. We are working out the language and putting it out. We also put out some information, an op-ed, trying to get it picked up by as many news outlets as possible. We are trying to go through some of the BIDs, which was the catalyst for us even understanding that this was now being communicated to our businesses. We are hoping to get it passed soon.

(02:49:01)

Great. Thank you for your time and I will let my neighbors know what you told me.

(02:49:06)

Yes, please. Pause on the changes right now. Thank you.

(02:49:18)

We will now turn to virtual panelists. For virtual panelists, once your name is called, a member of our staff will unmute you and the sergeant-at-arms will set the timer and give you the go-ahead to begin. Please wait for the sergeant to announce that you may begin before delivering your testimony. Now, I will call the first virtual panelist, Christopher Johnson. Are you on?

(02:49:44)

Starting time.

(02:49:46)

Yeah. Hello. Hello. My name is Christopher Leon Johnson. I just got back from John McCarthy — you can see the video later on about the MTA making bus fast and free. But I am going to say this right now that I just got back from another nonprofit event outside City Hall which is working towards that project. I am going to say this right now that they need to step up and really call for more legal services for the liberistas. They need to step up to the plate.

I will say this right now — shout out to the City Council for helping out with the NYPD and stop criminalizing immigrants. But the MTA and the City Council need to step up when it comes to stopping the criminalization of immigrants when it comes to fare evasion. Remove the NYPD from the eagle team. That is how you really make sure immigrants do not get harassed more by the NYPD when it comes to this immigration problem in New York City.

Going forward, the City Council has to make sure that street vendors — I am at City Hall right now — street vendors do not stop being arrested by the NYPD. I understand that the City Council was instrumental in implementing a law to where the NYPD is not criminalizing migrants when it comes to street vending. But I am calling on the City Council to introduce a bill to where the Sanitation Police Department cannot be criminalizing street vendors. Once that happens, I believe that the City Council will really show that they care about standing for migrants. I hope you introduce a bill for this in the future. That is all I have to say.

(02:51:50)

I have another hearing so take care. Enjoy. Thank you. Next up we have Melissa Chua.

(02:51:57)

Starting time.

(02:52:04)

Hi, good afternoon, Chair, Council members and staff. Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Melissa. I am the director of the Immigrant Protection Unit at the New York Legal Assistance Group, NYLAG. You have already heard a lot today about the devastating impact of the fear sowed by widespread unconstitutional and illegal ICE detentions in our community. NYLAG is part of the Rapid Response Legal Collaborative, through which we provide legal services to non-citizens who are detained or at risk for detention, and the pro se plus project, through which we provide advocacy in and out of court for non-citizens who are facing the process alone.

As we have also heard about today, the evisceration of protections like TPS for thousands of New Yorkers, the deprivation of due process rights for asylum seekers and prolonged waiting times for affirmative benefits have had devastating economic impacts. What I also wanted to talk about today was the effect of truncated asylum hearings in which non-citizens are hurriedly ordered removed without the protections of due process, which has resulted in immigrant New Yorkers being deprived of long-term stability and relief and employment authorization in the short term. The need to support pro se immigrant New Yorkers in appeals to keep their cases alive and potentially continue their employment authorization has never been higher. These cases are complex and require real advocacy but are necessary to provide basic protections in immigration court and keep the promises of stability alive.

Through our legal services, NYLAG has sought to provide full legal services and screenings for individuals who may be losing employment authorization because of the end of protections like TPS. We have also provided habeas petitions, appeals and motions for individuals who face enforcement, detention as well as economic instability. For these reasons, the city can support immigrant communities enduring the harmful effects of these changes by supporting community-based organizations directly assisting immigrant communities and legal services agencies. The assaults on the livelihoods of working immigrant New Yorkers only increase the need for high quality legal services.

(02:54:10)

Thank you for your ongoing commitment to our work and our communities. We look forward to working with you in the future. Thank you for your testimony. We have now heard from everyone who has signed up to testify. If we inadvertently missed anyone who would like to testify in person, please visit the sergeant's table and complete a witness slip. If we inadvertently missed anyone who would like to testify virtually, please use the raise hand function in Zoom and a member of our staff will call on you in the order of your hand raised. Seeing no one else, I would like to note again that written testimony, which will be reviewed in full by committee staff, may be submitted to testimony@council.nyc.gov up to 72 hours after the close of this hearing.