00:00Mr. Mayor, last Wednesday, a 20-year-old asylum seeker who was in the country legally was, he was a student at a Bronx High School, was arrested when he went for his regular court hearing on his asylum seeker application, didn't have a criminal record, there were no charges against him, he entered the country legally, but ICE picked him up and now he's being shuffled from one ICE detention center to the other around the country.
00:29How is that acceptable for a student at a New York City high school with no criminal record to be picked up by ICE and deported in an expedited fashion? And what does that say to the immigrants here who are afraid to use city services?
00:46Well, first, I want to be extremely clear. That did not happen in the school. We don't coordinate with ICE on civil enforcement. So you know what we know. We, we may, people should really understand that this was not in the school building.
01:03We don't know what was the outcome of the court case. You show up to hearings, you show up to hearings for a reason. Something happens during those hearings. We're not responsible for them. We're not in charge of them. And so I think that that's a question that should be referred to federal authorities. Because you know more than we know, because we don't coordinate with that.
01:20I just wondered if given your relationship with Tom Holman, if you might be able to talk to him to review this case, because on the surface of it, it seems like they jumped the gun.
01:31Well, we have to be extremely careful because the, the New York City council laws, I'm limited on what coordination I can do. And so sometimes there's a blessing and it's a curse. We don't know what happened at that hearing. As I stated, you know more than we know. We, what we want to be clear, it did not happen in the school building, which I say to parents all the time, have your children go to school.
01:56Again, we don't know the outcome of the case. I don't know what the case was about. And I'm not allowed to coordinate with them. And I'm, I'm going to follow the law. You know, me, I don't break laws. I follow the law.
02:09What's happening?
02:10I wonder, off Marsha's question, is there any message, message you'd want to share with the undocumented students and families in the city's public school system?
02:22Do you think this is a message of, like, I'm protecting you, you're safe to go to school, you're safe to utilize the city's resources when you have a student who did use the resources in the city in some way and was detained?
02:37Well, how could I be any clearer? It didn't happen in school. I'm telling children to go to school. Be in school. We have not had ice raids in our school. We have not had ice raids in our churches. We have not had ice raids in our hospitals. We have not had ice raids at places of business.
02:55Everywhere I'm telling people to go, I'm living up to what I shared with them. And so if you or anyone is telling children not to go to school because of something that happened in court, that's the wrong thing to do. Every child needs to be in school. If they're not in school, they can be the victim of sex trafficking, harassment, violence. Children should be in school.
03:18I told parents that, and I lived up to that. We have had no raids in our schools.
