Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo Signs Legislation to Increase Protections for Immigrant Children Across New York

ALBANY, New York, June 27 -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-New York, issued the following news release:

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today signed legislation to increase protections for immigrant children who have been separated from their families as a result of the Trump Administration's inhumane "zero tolerance" policy. The legislation will provide parents who have been detained in New York, or are facing deportation from the state, an opportunity to appoint someone of their choosing to step into their shoes and provide emergency care for their child. More information is available here (https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-signs-legislation-increase-protections-immigrant-children-new-york-state).

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here (https://youtu.be/T02LCgKpVFo) and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here (https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/zMHnYoQLdy).

AUDIO of the event is available here (https://soundcloud.com/nygovcuomo/governor-cuomo-signs-legislation-to-increase-protections-for-immigrant-children-in-new-york-state).

PHOTOS of the event are available on Governor Cuomo's Flickr page (https://www.flickr.com/photos/governorandrewcuomo/albums/72157698447389335).

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Governor Cuomo: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Please, please, it's great to be back at Hostos. The Boogie Down Bronx, as they like to say. You do like to say that, the Boogie Down Bronx. Marcos Crespo is a great Assemblyman, he is a great advocate, he is a great fighter, he is the person who you want on your side. Let's give him a big round of applause, Marcos Crespo. Your Borough President, Ruben Diaz, who is doing a great job, give him a round of applause.

I do have to tell you a little story about the both of them, though. We have, once a year, something called the Adirondack Challenge. The Adirondack Challenge is when we invite everybody to go up to the Adirondacks to see the Adirondacks, because a lot of people in the New York City area, they just don't know what we have in the Adirondacks. So to get people to experience the Adirondacks, we go up to the Adirondacks and I invite all the legislators. And one of the events we have at the Adirondack Challenge is a whitewater rafting race where you have separate teams, everybody has a team, and then we race, who is the fastest in the raft down the river in the whitewater.

Last year, we have a big race, 30 rafts. The Bronx had a raft and I had a raft and my raft won the race, legitimately. Timekeeper certified by KPMG, the whole course. The Bronx--Boogie Down Bronx--protests the competition. I didn't even know you could protest the competition. But they come with a claim that they had a better time, the timekeeper was biased, this whole Bronx conspiracy theory. So I said to them, I never heard of a protest of the competition, I don't know that it's legal, but if you really believe you're better, fundamentally better, we will give you a rematch. And, by the way, you don't even have to go back to the Adirondacks. I offer you an open challenge to do a raft race down the Bronx River, I said.

Bronx River's a great comeback story, by the way, so I said to your Borough President, Marcos Crespo, I said, whenever you are ready, I'll bring the rafts. You know what I've heard? Nothing. Nothing. It just all went away. All went away. I don't want to say your Borough President and your Assemblymember are afraid to compete against the powerhouse state team we have assembled, but I just want to reiterate, whenever you are ready, Mr. Borough President, I will see you on the Bronx River, just bring your paddle. Give a big round of applause to the Borough President, Marcos Crespo, to all my colleagues in the legislature--the legislature does not get enough credit.

We have done a lot of great things in this budget and in this legislative year. You'll hear about one of them today, but New York has done all sorts of firsts. First and most aggressive bill to protect women against sexual harassment, we did this year. First disclosure of IE's on the internet. So, we've done a lot of great work and this is very practical. It's sad that we have to sign this bill, but it is important. And let me start with a story somewhat offbeat, but it's what I was thinking about this morning. I was about 10 years old and I found--my father had a little office upstairs in the house in Queens--a little safe. It was like the size of a shoebox and it had a little combination lock on it. And it was blue, crinkly, paint finish, so I went to my father and said, can I have this safe? I had really precocious sisters who would just ransack my room, so I said let me just put everything in this little safe. And my father said, oh no, you can't have that safe. That's from the life insurance company, that's where I put the life insurance policy. And I said, life insurance policy? What's a life insurance policy? I was 10 years old.

He said, God forbid something happens and I'm not here to take care of you kids, that's what life insurance is about. I said, what do you mean God forbid? Where are you going? He said, well God forbid you could have a car accident, God forbid you could have a health issue, but I would want to make sure you kids were taken care of. And I was in my own way traumatized as a young child, you think about losing your parent. How could that be? Car accident, health issue and what do you do, and here's life insurance that can pay your bills, but you don't have your parents. But, life can create uncontrollable perils, and you have to be aware of them and protect yourself and that was life insurance. My kids are much smarter than I was. One of my daughters came to me a few years ago and said, Dad I want to sit down and talk about your life insurance policy. But the concept was uncontrollable events. Health events. And when my father spoke about them, he prefaced them with God forbid this should happen. God forbid I have a car accident. God forbid I have a heart attack.

We have perils today that are not uncontrollable perils. They are not God forbid perils. They are government created perils. Government created. Purposefully government created perils. Women are in peril. They could lose a right to choose. They could continue to be victims of sexual harassment with no address from the federal government. Union members face peril. Supreme Court came down with Janus decision today. Another decision written by Trump's Supreme Court for Trump's politics that now endangers labor unions. The environment is in peril. And new immigrants are in peril. This federal government has declared war on new immigrants. And God bless them by the way, they made no secret about it. You can't say they deceived us. All through the campaign President Trump was talking about his wall. I want the wall. I'm going to build a wall. It's going to be a big wall. Trump on the wall. Everybody is going to be on the other side of the wall. We're going to build a wall, throw everybody out and then lock the door and everything is fine. It was his answer to every question. He took all the anger, all the hate, all the anxiety in society and he gave it a nice simple target - it's the immigrants. You're nervous about your job, you're nervous about your income? It's the immigrants. He started with the wall, he then went right to the travel ban. Yesterday's Supreme Court came down, confirmed the travel ban. Another Trump political doctrine, approved by the Trump court. It's Islamophobia, clearly. Cloaked as national security. What they're doing on the southern border? I mean just think about this. Zero tolerance policy they announce April 7; we're going to arrest every family. When you arrest every family, what you automatically trigger is the separation of the children. Because you know the law says you can't put the child in the detention center. So they announce this policy knowing they're going to separate children from their parents. Where are we? Who are we? 2,400 children separated, they didn't even have a plan. They didn't even know where they were going to go. We have hundreds in our foster system here in New York. The foster care homes, a lot of them are getting backed up. They're then referring the children to private foster care. They're trying to find extended family members to take the child.

This is all done by the federal government. And it is real. And it is happening. Federal government has taken the agency ICE--ICE was supposed to be an anti-terrorism organization. It was formed after 9/11 to fight terrorism. ICE is now a political police organization for the President's political agenda. That's what ICE has become. And it is a deplorable use of a police department to politicize it the way Trump has. We have ICE walking onto farms in upstate New York and just grabbing a worker, no warrant, no notice, no identification, just grabbing workers and they disappear. New York City, we had ICE grab the delivery man who was delivering a pizza. And then disappeared. They wanted to deport the pizza delivery man within 24 hours. Grab him, get him out. Literally within 24 hours. Never had a chance to go say goodbye to the wife or the children. That's where we are.

This is a government created peril. As Marcos said, in New York, we are the most aggressive state in the nation fighting back against these policies. We are suing the federal government to stop the separation of families. I believe it violates due process, a California judge yesterday decided that it did. We're providing services to the children who are separated at the foster care homes and we're providing services for the children who've been placed in private foster care and we're working to reunite the families with the children who've been separated because the way they did it was so ad hoc, was so chaotic, that they're having trouble now making the connections. And we're working with them on doing that. And we have the first program of its kind in the country called the Liberty Defense Fund where we will provide counsel before a person is deported.

But that is the reality of this new peril. It is a new peril. It's no longer just God forbid I have a heart attack or God forbid I have a car accident. It's maybe ICE will grab me at work and deport me. And what this bill says, recognizing that painful reality. What Assemblyperson Rozic and Senator Savino as prime sponsors and the other members have done, the law previously said you can appoint a guardian for a period of time in case of death, disability, incapacitation which were the God forbid scenarios. Given this new reality, we're changing the law to add the right to appoint a guardian if you are deported. Because the way ICE operates and what's happening out there is they can grab you, throw you in the back of a truck, and you can never see your family again. So there is now another category of unforeseen possible trauma, government created. But you have the right to appoint a guardian in case of deportation.

We're going to sign the bill and I applaud the bill and I applaud the leadership on the bill because it's necessary. And because it's real. But I tell you this, I'm anxious for the day when I can sign a bill repealing this bill. When no one lives in fear of deportation because we understand that these are not the American values that this federal government is now spreading throughout the country. This is not who we are at our best. This is not our character, these are not our values, we are not people who take children from mothers and fathers. That's not who we are. We are not people who believe immigration is bad because we are all immigrants. We are not people who believe diversity is bad. We celebrate diversity. Diversity is what made America America. For this President, for this federal government to now take the position, well if you are a new immigrant then you're repugnant to the concept of America--there is no concept of America without immigration. We were nobody. There was no one here. There was no one here. We had to put up a sign that said, there is no one here in this land. We invite everyone to come join us. That was the invitation that we put out. White, black, rich, poor, didn't matter. Come here to this new land and we'll form one community out of all of us. E pluribus unum, out of many, one. That was us who said that.

And now this federal government preaches the exact opposite. They may not believe, they may not believe that the American promise is real. We know the American promise is real. Because we live it in New York. Because we have 19 million people in this state from all over the globe, and we are better and stronger for our diversity. And we will not allow this inhumane, disgusting behavior, embarrassingly disgusting is what this country is now doing on the border. There are no other words for it. And that people have to now live in fear of deportation. I talk to people all day long who say, "I'm afraid to leave the house because I'm afraid there'll be an ICE officer who comes and grabs me and I'm gone," and that's why we have to sign this bill.

But this is not the way America is supposed to be. And we will change it and we will fix it and the people of this nation are going to rise up and tell this President and this Congress, this November this is not who we want to be. We reject your vision of America for a kinder, sweater, gentler, truer vision of America. And that'll be the November agenda. And then we'll come back and repeal the bill next year.