NYC migrant crisis: For a migrant father and his sons, a year of struggle, fear and hope in New York

Julio Zambrano was nervous as he walked into a downtown Manhattan courtroom Nov. 13 and stood before the immigration judge.

He removed the backpack that carried three pieces of paper ordering the Ecuadorian migrant and his two young sons to appear in court to show why they should not be deported.

Amid Zambrano’s anxiety was hope that by following the rules — showing up in court, meeting repeatedly with immigration authorities and filing a written asylum claim — he would be allowed to stay in the country where he had arrived without legal permission just before Christmas last year.

"I’m trying to do the right thing to give them no reason to send me back," he told Newsday in Spanish.

After the judge told Zambrano that the federal government believes he does not have a right to stay in the United States, she set Zambrano's next court date: Dec. 21, 2027.

The three-year delay is a sign of how overburdened immigration courts have become as the number of cases in the system has more than doubled in the past two years amid the arrival of hundreds of thousands of new asylum-seekers such as Zambrano.

He is one of more than 3.7 million people with pending immigration-court cases trying to navigate a legal system and culture that are not their own, in a language that usually is not their own. A deportation order is the most likely result if they fail.

New York City alone has processed nearly 227,000 people through its migrant intake centers since the spring of 2022, spending $6.65 billion on hotel rooms, shelter beds, food and other assistance, according to city data. The massive spending has strained municipal finances, though fewer migrants have been arriving in the city in recent months, leading to a drop in people receiving free housing, city data shows.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order in June, and took further action in September, greatly restricting the number of asylum-seekers allowed into the country. Before June, migrants requesting asylum at the border often were permitted to live in the United States until their cases were adjudicated. That is less common now.

By that point, the migrant crisis had become a flash point in the presidential campaign. Exit polls found that immigration was the single most important issue for people who voted for President-elect Donald Trump, topping the economy.

Trump vows to go much further than Biden to control migration. The president-elect promised to close the border on his first day in office, and to then initiate mass deportations.

Immigration law experts say migrants like Zambrano already in the court system cannot be deported without a judicial order. But Zambrano said he and other migrants he’s talked with at the city-funded midtown hotel where they live are worried.

"I’m very afraid of him," he said of Trump. "People don’t know what’s going to happen."

A year in New York

Newsday has followed Zambrano, 36, since he and his sons, Julio, 10, and César, 7, arrived in Manhattan on Jan. 4 without coats and little but the clothes on their backs. Their experiences help reveal migrants’ effect on New York City, and the city’s effect on them, and they offer a glimpse into the nation’s complex, overwhelmed and ever-changing immigration system.

Zambrano and his sons spent two months traveling on foot and by bus from their home in the Andean city of Ambato, Ecuador, to the U.S.-Mexico border, and walked into Texas on Dec. 22, 2023. After they spent a few days in detention, immigration agents handed the father papers to meet with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Manhattan in January and to appear in court Nov. 13. He and his sons then took a bus from Texas to New Jersey.

The three lived in city-funded hotel rooms in Manhattan and the Bronx for three months. Zambrano then moved to Philadelphia. Although asylum seekers cannot obtain legal work permits until at least 180 days after filing asylum requests, he worked at a fruit-packing plant while the boys stayed with their mother — his ex-wife — and the former couple's two daughters in Manhattan. The ex-wife and daughters had arrived in New York the year before.

Zambrano returned to New York in early July and now lives with his older son in a hotel room a block from the Empire State Building. César remains with his mother and sisters.

Rush to hearing

Zambrano takes two subway trains with Julio to a school in Washington Heights, in upper Manhattan, which César also attends.

At 7 a.m. on the morning of the court hearing, the two headed toward the school as usual, even though the documents Zambrano received in Texas said the two boys must appear in court as well. "My children need to be in school," Zambrano explained.

The younger Julio ran excitedly up the subway stairs at 168th Street when he spotted his brother, César, walking ahead of him with their older sister Jamilet, 15. After barely a minute above ground, Zambrano hurried back down the stairs of the 168th Street subway stop to take the A express train 10 miles south toward the hearing. 

His walk from a downtown subway station turned into a run as he approached the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, where he had met with an ICE official in January for a brief check-in. The proceedings were scheduled to start at 8:30 a.m. He arrived at 8:25 a.m. at what a guard said was the wrong entrance.

A look of panic on his face, Zambrano ran to find a long queue snaking down another side of the building outside the immigration court entrance. With the wind chill making it feel like 29 degrees, Zambrano shivered in his light black jacket, and he reached into his backpack to take out a black vest to cover his ears.

Zambrano fidgeted.

"I’m going to be late," he said, annoyed that when the line split in two to move toward the metal detectors and X-ray machines inside, he had ended up in the slower-moving queue.

At 9:15 a.m., he took an elevator to the 12th floor to find long lists of computer printouts of names and courtroom numbers on a wall. He located his name and searched for Courtroom 23, where immigration Judge Anna C. Little presided.

'Good job'

As Zambrano entered the courtroom, Little already was instructing nine other asylum applicants about preparing for their next hearing. The courtroom was small, and the 10 of them — an 11th arrived a few minutes later — crowded together, their faces looking toward the judge or the Spanish-language interpreter.

After addressing the group, Little called Zambrano’s name. He sat on a black-cushioned wooden chair at a table.

"You are here in immigration court because the government alleges you do not have the legal right to remain in the United States," Little told him. "Once a hearing has been conducted, the court will make a decision about whether you can remain in the United States."

Little noted that Zambrano had filed his application for asylum.

"Sí," Zambrano said.

"Good job," the judge said.

She told him that, before his next hearing, he should gather any evidence that would bolster his asylum request, such as police reports from Ecuador and witness statements, and have them translated into English. If he missed any immigration court hearing, he would be ordered deported, she said.

Zambrano asked the judge if it would hurt his case that his children were not in the courtroom.

"They’re in school," he said in Spanish.

Little told him not to worry. "You have come here," she said. "You are the lead respondent."

"I was a little afraid about that," Zambrano said. "Thank you very much."

She told him to return at 2 p.m. Dec. 21, 2027, when he may learn if he and his sons can stay in the country or must leave, based on whether she or another judge rules they have valid asylum claims.

As Zambrano walked out of the courtroom, a wide smile and relaxed expression replaced the look of apprehension he had when he walked in.

"I’m really relieved," he said.

He had feared how Little would react to his late arrival and his children’s absence.

I’m surer now that because I’m doing the right thing, the country is going to help me.

—Julio Zambrano, 36, Ecuadorian migrant

"She treated me with respect," he said. "I’m surer now that because I’m doing the right thing, the country is going to help me."

Zambrano said that, before the next hearing, he would seek medical records from Ecuador that may document his injuries following a robbery attempt a few years ago in which, he said, a group of about 15 men surrounded him, demanded money and beat him with rocks and a chain. He also said that, because he owned a small store in Ecuador, several men with pistols and knives ordered him to pay them money so they would not harm and rob him. He said the police did nothing, so he doesn't have a police report.

Many asylum applicants have no written evidence of acts that could qualify them for asylum, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School in Ithaca and co-author of the 22-volume "Immigration Law and Procedure."

"It's very hard to get the documents from your home country proving that either you have been persecuted, or you have a well-founded fear of persecution," he said. "How many people can get a note from their torturer saying, 'This is why I tortured you?'"

Experts: No immediate deportation

Zambrano's wait of more than three years until his next hearing was not a surprise to immigration lawyers and experts. 

Amid a deluge of cases, the average wait at the main immigration courts in New York was 1,249 days, or nearly 3½ years, from the filing of an asylum application to the hearing at which applicants present their cases, according to federal data as of December 2023 analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The average wait nationwide was even higher: 1,424 days in December 2023, the latest date for which the clearinghouse has compiled statistics.

Despite Trump’s promise to deport millions, Zambrano, his sons and other asylum applicants are "safer than other people" and cannot be deported until after a judge hears their cases, Yale-Loehr said. One exception that could potentially lead to deportation before a final asylum hearing is conviction of certain crimes in the United States or abroad, he said.

Yale-Loehr said many factors determine whether Zambrano and other migrants win their asylum cases.

The law requires they show they have suffered persecution in their homeland, or have a well-founded fear of persecution if they are sent back, due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinions or "membership in a particular social group." The latter is a category that can be interpreted differently by each judge, and by different presidential administrations.

For example, the Department of Justice under the Obama administration in 2014 ruled that a Guatemalan survivor of domestic violence whom police there would not protect was a member of a "particular social group": Married women in Guatemala unable to leave their partners. Immigration courts viewed the decision as a precedent to grant asylum to women from other countries with similar profiles. The first Trump administration reversed that ruling, stating that such women do not qualify for asylum.

Five months after Biden took office, his justice department reverted to the Obama administration’s interpretation.

The second Trump administration could change that interpretation, and others, yet another time, making what may be a valid asylum claim today invalid in a few months, said John Giammatteo, an associate professor of law at the University at Buffalo and an expert in asylum law.

Judges also can be influenced by political shifts, he said. If the Trump administration advocates for more denials of asylum requests, that could lead judges to more often refuse asylum, he said. 

In addition, the new administration could pressure judges to hear more cases, as the previous Trump administration did, and that can mean less time for applicants to gather evidence and argue their cases in court, he said.

Andrew Arthur said that when he became an immigration judge in York, Pennsylvania, in 2006, cases were resolved in a few weeks. The current delays are unfair to those with valid asylum claims, he said.

Arthur, who now is a resident fellow in law and policy for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, which favors more limits on illegal and legal immigration, said most of those requesting asylum come to the United States for economic reasons, which is not a category covered under asylum law. But they have heard that applying for asylum allows them to live and work in the country while they wait for the resolution of their cases, or before they disappear without returning to court, he said.

The number of deportation orders for people who missed immigration court hearings more than tripled between 2022 and 2024, from 62,753 to 222,223, according to data from the federal Executive Office for Immigration Review. Many will never appear in court again and will remain in the country, living in the shadows, Arthur said.

Giammatteo said it's wrong to assume that most asylum applicants leave their homelands solely for economic reasons. That may be one factor, but their destitution may be linked to their persecution, and "the asylum system has always recognized there can be multiple reasons for people leaving," he said.

A huge determinant in asylum cases is knowledge of the intricacies of complex U.S. immigration laws: Applicants without attorneys are far less likely to be granted asylum than those with them, Yale-Loehr said.

As the number of immigration cases has surged, so has the percentage of people without legal representation. At the end of fiscal year 2019, 65% of people in immigration court nationwide, in asylum and non-asylum cases, had legal representation, the Syracuse center found. By the end of fiscal year 2023, that number had fallen to 30%. New York’s rate was the third highest: 44%.

An overwhelmed system

Zambrano still has no lawyer, despite advantages that many other migrants do not have. The biggest one may be Phyllis Klecka, 78, an East Islip woman who connected with Zambrano after reading Newsday’s first story about him in January and seeing photos of Zambrano and his sons without coats as they walked through Manhattan on a cold, windy day.

When I saw those kids freezing and him with the blanket around his shoulders — he just had a T-shirt — I couldn’t sleep. I had to do something.

—Phyllis Klecka, 78, of East Islip

"I just had to help them," Klecka said. "When I saw those kids freezing and him with the blanket around his shoulders — he just had a T-shirt — I couldn’t sleep. I had to do something."

She has bought clothes, shoes, toiletries and other gifts for Zambrano and his four children, including the striped blue-and-white button-down shirt Zambrano wore to court to appear more distinguished. She also arranged for him to get help with his asylum application from The Migrant Center at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in midtown, near Zambrano’s hotel and her executive assistant job.

Zambrano said he verbally asked an immigration agent for asylum after crossing the border. He knew he needed to later submit a written asylum form, but he didn't do so for months, because he had no idea where to find one or how to complete it.

In August, a Migrant Center volunteer helped him fill out the 12-page form, which must be completed in English, a language Zambrano is just beginning to learn.

Klecka fruitlessly looked for an attorney for Zambrano through The Migrant Center and several other nonprofits, as well as reaching out to four private attorneys’ offices, but she couldn’t find anyone to take his case, even when she sometimes offered to pay.

Jennifer Gordon, a law professor at Fordham University in the Bronx and an expert in immigration law, said that, amid the spike in asylum cases, a growing number of migrants cannot find an attorney.

"It’s just a massively larger number of people trying to go through the same system," she said.
Immigration lawyers are taking more unpaid cases, but they can’t keep up with the increased caseload, she said.

The number of pending immigration court cases is nearly 10 times higher than a decade ago, according to the Syracuse center. Nearly 1.7 million of the 3.7 million cases are asylum requests.

The massive increase in cases during the Biden administration stems from the president’s lax immigration policies, Arthur said.

Everything that has happened in the past four years has been a policy choice.

—Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy for the Center for Immigration Studies

"Everything that has happened in the past four years has been a policy choice," he said.

Biden's June executive order and subsequent rule changes significantly decreased the number of asylum-seekers entering the country — but that just shows he could have taken action far earlier to better control migration, Arthur said.

Immigration advocates argue that the executive order, and further restrictions enacted in September, put many people with credible asylum claims in danger.

Arthur said Trump should work to bring order to the asylum process, such as by hiring more immigration judges to reduce the backlog. He said the administration also should build more detention facilities to house asylum-seekers, rather than releasing them, and reinstate a first-term Trump policy that required many asylum applicants to remain in Mexico until their U.S. immigration court dates. Immigration advocates and human rights groups have called detention of asylum applicants inhumane and say the remain-in-Mexico approach endangers migrants’ lives.

Although Trump cannot order asylum applicants like Zambrano deported yet, he can initiate the mass deportations that he is promising, as long as he can obtain the funding, said Lina Newton, a political science professor at Hunter College in Manhattan and an immigration expert.

'Head held high'

One of Trump's rationales for mass deportations is his claim that many immigrants are violent criminals. There have been high-profile crimes committed by migrants, though multiple studies have found lower rates of crime among immigrants — including those in the country illegally — than nonimmigrants.

Zambrano has heard the links politicians make between immigrants and violence, and he’s seen news reports of crimes committed by migrants in New York, including by members of the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Agua.

He said he and other peaceful migrants should not be lumped in with the small number of criminals.

"For people who are doing bad things, I shouldn’t have to pay for what they’re doing," he said. "We’ve come to a country that is giving us opportunities, that is giving us shelter, that my country would never do. I would never bite the hand that feeds me."

Zambrano said he "came to this country to follow the rules."

For Zambrano’s first seven months in the United States, immigration authorities could monitor his whereabouts, using an ankle bracelet that had been clasped to his left leg in Texas.

In June, his first request to remove the ankle bracelet was denied. In August, a government official at the Javits Building finally took it off, saying she was doing so because he had attended all required appointments since his arrival in New York, Zambrano said.

ICE said in a statement that electronic monitors are typically removed "based upon a change in a participant’s circumstances and program compliance." The agency did not respond to questions about Zambrano's case.

Zambrano now is looking toward the future. Asylum-seekers can request work permits 150 days after filing asylum applications. For Zambrano, that is next month. If approved, he can start working legally 30 days after that.

Klecka’s help with clothing and other necessities has helped him get by without a job in New York.

"She’s a very, very, very good woman," Zambrano said. "I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t met her."

Most migrants don’t have benefactors like Klecka and must find some way to make ends meet beyond what the city provides them.

"It’s that terrible six-month period," said Gordon, the Fordham law professor, referring to the time before asylum-seekers can receive work permits.

Many people work off the books and rely on city shelters, soup kitchens and other assistance, she said.

"You’ve got to ask yourself, ‘How do people survive?’" she said. 

Zambrano said he is eager to work. He wants to be a welder, as he was in Ecuador, although he’s willing to do whatever is available. He attends English classes twice a week at The Migrant Center, in part to help him in a future job.

"It’s a great honor for me to be in this country," he said.

But he knows there is no guarantee he and his boys will be able to stay in the United States permanently. If the government tries to deport him, he said he’d plead with them, "‘Please, I haven’t done anything wrong. Don’t send me to Ecuador.’"

But if his entreaties go unheeded and he were deported, he said he would leave knowing that he tried to live his life in the United States as best he could.

"These are the laws of the country," he said. "I will leave with my head held high."

By David Olson

david.olson@newsday.com@DavidOlson11

David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.