Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) highlighted her efforts on Wednesday to aid migrant children who crossed the U.S. border without parents, announcing her administration is spending over $7 million to provide them with legal representation.The governor said $7.25 million will be allocated to provide legal representation for around 1,400 children in New York undergoing deportation proceedings in court, during a press conference alongside New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and state Attorney General Letitia James. The funding will be directed to legal service providers led by the Hispanic Federation, according to Hochul’s office.“Damn right I did,” Hochul wrote on X, in response to a media report on the spending.
“When we lose sight of our shared responsibility to protect God’s children here on Earth as human beings, as parents, then we lose part of who we are,” she added during the press briefing.The children in New York are a fraction of over 500,000 unaccompanied migrant children whom Republicans believe were encountered by border officials during the Biden administration.There have been serious concerns that there were significant failures by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency tasked with overseeing those children, to ensure they were not released from the government to human traffickers or into other troubling conditions. The ORR appeared to have lost track of around 300,000 unaccompanied migrant children during the Biden administration, sparking concerns that they could have been sex trafficked, used for labor, or left in other dangerous situations.Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) takes part in a press conference to announce action against Immigration and Customs Enforcement overreach on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
