Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Intergovernmental Affairs Committee of the Westchester County Board of Legislators met on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, at 3:00 PM to receive an update from Neighbors Link on changes in New York State immigration enforcement laws and recent ICE activity in Westchester. The meeting, chaired by Legislator Emiljana Ulaj, included a presentation from Carola Bracco, Executive Director, and Jonathan Campozano, Senior Staff Attorney, and featured questions and discussion from committee members. The meeting adjourned at 3:49 PM.
This meeting is being recorded and summarized. Great. Happy Tuesday afternoon. My name is Emiliana Uai. I'm glad to be the chair of intergovernmental affairs. We'll just get started with some quick attendance. Where did my sheets go? I am here. Unfortunately couldn't be here today. Legislator Pierce. Present. All right. We also have a majority leader. Thank you. Yes. We see Majority Leader Judah Holston joining us virtually. Thank you so much for listening to me. Thank you. I'm so glad that our guests could make the time to join us today. We have with us Carola Braco from Neighbors Link and Jonathan Campozano as well to give us an update on ICE activity in Westchester and the state uh law changes regarding immigration enforcement. So we've heard about some high profile ICE activity situations and would love to hear from you about any other trends you've seen, any other advice you have for us or our local communities. It's great. Thank you so much for inviting us. We appreciate it. I'm Carola Brackle, I'm the executive director at Neighbors Link. And maybe I'll let Jonathan introduce himself and also just give a little bit about your background and work that you do at Neighbor's Link. Sure, from Jonathan Campazon, we've senior staff attorney in our uh legal department at Neighbors Linked. Uh a lot of the work that I specifically do deals with children victims of crimes. Um but since there's so much overlap, also dealing with our topic of today, dealing with ice and uh interactions with ice as well. Thanks, Jonathan. And just to give you a sense, I um for those that might not be familiar with Neighbors Link. We offer um a variety of programs that strengthen the whole community through the integration and inclusion of influence. So we offer ESL education, uh workforce development, um, parent education programs. We also provide cultural awareness training for the um police departments in our area and uh school districts, and then we also have an immigration legal practice that serves about 2800 people a year. Our organization as a whole serves about 10,000 people. Very interesting. I didn't know about the training for local police departments. Yes, so we train how often do you run that? How do they reach out to you? Yes, we've uh for some years now we've been providing uh an interactive cultural awareness training program at the police academy. And uh so for all the new recruits for some years we did it for the in-service training. So the um the police officers that had years of experience and uh for probably a decade now, if not longer, we've been doing trainings that are interactive with role play that help police officers think through working with diverse communities and how to build how to build bridges and um and to execute their community policing objectives, and in addition to that, we also provide training that brings together Department of Social Services workers as well as police officers, and that training we do hi legislator, how are you? Right, and um that training we do uh usually in DSS offices, and it includes about eight to ten DSS workers and about five or six police officers, and those are uh two sets of trainings that they that the group attends, and we facilitate a conversation regarding the work that they do together out on the streets.