New York’s immigrant population faces sharp impacts from the federal budget megabill. Aside from cuts to social safety net programs, the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ increases the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It allocates $45 billion, more than 5 times the agency’s current budget – to build new detention centers and 8 billion for new hires.
Diana Caba, vice president for community and economic empowerment with the Hispanic Federation, said immigrant New Yorkers are living in fear of ICE’s growing presence.
“We’ve had a client call our hotline requesting assistance because they received a removal order in absentia because they were afraid to go to court because her husband had gone to immigration court and had been detained,” she explained. “I think overall there already was fear, but now, with the latest, the fear has increased across the board, and at the end of the day, people want to feel safe.”
However, New York lawmakers have tried to keep this from happening. The New York for All Act is a bill that would prevent local and state law enforcement from working with federal immigration agents. Although it continues to gain support, it hasn’t passed the state Legislature since first being introduced in 2019.
Beyond ICE, immigrants are worried about everyday issues such as feeding their families or accessing health care. 300,000 New York households could lose SNAP benefits, with an estimated average loss of $220 per month. Caba said this decline in funding would impact students’ ability to get free school meals.
“[If] these families lose access to SNAP and/or Medicaid, their automatic eligibility thresholds for schools will drop, meaning this could potentially cut entire schools off from federal funding for free breakfast and school lunches across the board,” she continued.
This is because the Community Eligibility Provision allows high-poverty schools to offer free meals to students without requiring meal applications. 4,200 New York schools, or 86% of those participating in the school lunch program, provided meals to more than 2.3 million kids every day during the 2023-24 school year.
Edwin is a reporter and producer in North Tonawanda, New York. He’s previously reported for the Niagara Gazette and the Ithaca Times. Edwin got an early start in radio interning for WBFO-88.7FM, NPR’s Buffalo affiliate. In 2018, he graduated from SUNY Buffalo State College with a B.A. in Journalism, and in 2022, graduated from Syracuse University with an M.S. in Communications.