Under Donald Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration, New Yorkers face new and grave threats of deportation just by being charged with a crime.
District Attorney have the power to protect undocumented immigrants in NYC by halting broken windows prosecutions.
What is a “broken windows prosecution?” It is when a person is arrested for and then charged with a low-level “quality of life” crime. These offenses include: jumping the subway turnstile, selling DVD’s on the street, forgetting to pay a fine, trespassing in a NYCHA building, littering, and having a small amount of marijuana.
New York has promised to be a sanctuary city and the District Attorney how need to do their part for the community. Halting broken windows prosecutions is the most immediate way of resisting Trump’s plan for mass deportation while demanding an end to the criminalization of low income New Yorkers of color.
Why is this important?
Broken windows arrests have always disproportionately impacted poor communities of color, specifically Black people. But now under Trump, these prosecutions are having devastating consequences for our non-citizen community members. In fact, under the new Executive Order, just being accused of a crime could lead to deportation. The NYPD has stated its intention to cooperate with the federal government’s new enforcement regime and reiterated its continued commitment to broken windows policing.
District Attorneys are the only people who have the power to halt these prosecutions by declining to prosecute these cases.
