Clip of the Week: Protecting NYC's Most Vulnerable Communities

As last weekend's End Family Separation/Keep Families Together marches across the country commenced in the name of our current administration's policies of tearing apart immigrant families accused of being in America without documentation, activists are adamant in protesting the inhumanity of calling the undocumented "animals" and putting them, including children, into cages and inhospitable detention camps along our Texas-Mexico border. On July 4th, activist Therese Patricia Okoumou of Rise and Resist climbed to the base of the Statue of Liberty to demonstrate for the abolition of ICE and for the release of imprisoned children and families, garnering worldwide media attention towards her cause. As protestors are active in fighting back against cruel immigration policies, many New Yorkers are looking to lend their voices and efforts to the cause and working to protect our city of immigrants.

In this Clip of the Week, District 4 City Councilmember Keith Powers sits with Bitta Mostafi of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs to discuss the ways the city is protecting vulnerable immigrant populations. From the IDCNY card that serves as identification for those without, educational programs, government resources and reifying the value of immigrants' contributions to our census, the two talk about what it means to fully integrate our undocumented brethern into society to raise their quality of life, lest they be forced to carry on in the shadows. Watch the whole episode now.