Cities United, de Blasio’s Immigration Coalition, Has Big Goals but Modest Start

New York Times

By Alexander Burns

September 13, 2015

Cities United, de Blasio’s Immigration Coalition, Has Big Goals but Modest Start

The coalition of the nation’s mayors was envisioned as a powerful advocacy machine, banding together to put President Obama’s executive actions on immigration into effect and to “amplify the progressive vision” by pushing for wholesale immigration reform.

But the coalition’s founder, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, had even greater ambitions. The group would aim to influence lawmakers “in a progressive direction that goes beyond immigration,” according to a memorandum circulated in December.

Over the past nine months, Mr. de Blasio’s coalition, Cities United for Immigration Action, has become an entity of far more modest proportions. It has struggled with the polarized politics of immigration and encountered logistical turbulence in its efforts to coordinate action across dozens of cities. Like the Obama administration, it has been buffeted by court rulings that have stopped the president’s policies from taking effect.

Some advocates have expressed dissatisfaction with the level of drama involved in the coalition’s start: An early fight over the authorship of a high-profile legal brief left immigration leaders frustrated by what they viewed as a heavy-handed approach by officials in New York. At least one major advocacy organization, the National Immigration Forum, quietly withdrew from the coalition this year.

“The coalition is incredibly important, but the model wasn’t really working for us as an organization,” Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum, wrote in an email to immigration officials in multiple cities in February.

Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, has appeared to turn the focus of his own national advocacy elsewhere, starting another project, the Progressive Agenda, in May to highlight income inequality in the 2016 campaign. There is an immigration plank in his liberal platform, but Mr. de Blasio has scarcely mentioned the issue in national speeches.

Cities United has rallied cities in select spots to tackle immigration-related concerns. So far, its main activity has been litigation: The group filed two amicus briefs in support of Mr. Obama’s contested executive actions, which would grant new protections to undocumented immigrants.

The coalition organized a conference in May to share information with other cities about New York’s municipal identification card program. Cities United is helping organize a “day of action” among cities this week, to disseminate information about applying for citizenship. Mr. de Blasio will play a public role in marking the occasion, a spokeswoman for the mayor, Amy Spitalnick, said.

Yet in some respects, Cities United stands as a vivid example of the hurdles Mr. de Blasio is encountering as a city leader with aspirations on a grand scale, melding local policy with national politics, and wielding City Hall and its staff to mobilize support for broad liberal goals. The December memo heralding the group’s start was bluntly political in its aspirations, declaring that “bold ideas win elections” and promising mayors a platform to go beyond “managing on-the-ground problems like street cleaning and crime.”

The collaboration between cities and advocacy groups, however, has not always gone smoothly, according to a review of hundreds of pages of public records, obtained through Freedom of Information requests in nine major cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

In January, New York officials clashed sharply with an outside counsel over the group’s first major project: an amicus brief that Cities United filed in support of Mr. Obama, in federal court in Texas. At the recommendation of the National Immigration Law Center, the coalition retained a Los Angeles firm, Andrade Gonzalez, to prepare the document.

Sean Andrade, a founder of the firm, said he suggested that Cities United list mayors from Texas as the major litigants in the case. Officials in New York disagreed, preferring to name New York City and Los Angeles as the chief litigants.

To Mr. Andrade’s dismay, New York officials also demanded that his firm’s name be removed from the brief.

“We were honored and proud to be part of that brief, because it’s such an important issue for us, especially as a Latino-owned litigation boutique,” Mr. Andrade said. “It became clear, for New York, there were some major political and ego issues involved.”

Ms. Spitalnick said the only issue involved was ensuring that the brief met New York City’s legal standards. In a compromise, Andrade Gonzalez’s name ultimately appeared on the document, along with the cities of New York and Los Angeles.

“Because New York City was going to be named on the brief, we of course needed to ensure that the brief reflected the quality that we expect of legal documents filed on behalf of the City of New York,” Ms. Spitalnick said.

The spat, however, raised lingering doubts: In an email shortly afterward, Mr. Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum, asked a top Los Angeles city official for her assessment of a Cities United proposal, “given the incredible amount of drama they kicked up on the amicus.”

“Not worth it!” replied Linda Lopez, the chief of immigrant affairs for Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, a Democrat.

Mr. Noorani, who described his group in a November email as “the behind-the-scenes coordinator” for Cities United, informed officials in February that the forum had halted its collaboration with Mr. de Blasio’s group.

In an interview, Mr. Noorani said he remained supportive of Cities United, but his own group decided to focus on other elements of immigration policy rather than slogging it out on the polarized issue of deferred action.

“It wasn’t necessarily a concern with what Cities United was doing,” Mr. Noorani said. “Our entire approach is to engage the center, the center-right and the center-left in this conversation.”

But with Mr. Obama’s administrative orders challenged in court, efforts to put White House policies into effect on the local level have stalled. Discussions of immigration have taken on a sharply divisive cast, limiting the appeal of Mr. de Blasio’s group among moderate and conservative mayors.

Nisha Agarwal, New York’s commissioner of immigrant affairs, said in an interview that the mayoral coalition had been forced to adjust its strategy based on litigation against the president’s policies. She said Cities United had focused so far on increasing its membership to over 100 mayors and sharing ideas between cities about inclusive immigration policy.

Ms. Agarwal, one of several city officials involved in steering the coalition, said Cities United aimed to mount a more ambitious lobbying effort in Washington going forward — the kind envisioned in its early planning documents. She presented the group’s activities up to this point as part of a gradual ramping-up.

“Organizing is the type of thing that starts, and you build and you build, and then you realize the power of it,” Ms. Agarwal said.

Other activists and city leaders outside New York called Cities United a worthwhile addition to the national community of immigration groups.

Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, Ohio, said the coalition had already “emboldened mayors around the country to take action” on local immigration issues.

“It has helped us have connections and created this network that helps us do really good work on this issue,” Ms. Whaley, a Democrat, said.

If Mr. de Blasio’s public involvement has tapered off, Ms. Spitalnick said he had been directly engaged behind the scenes, reaching out to recruit mayors as participants in the coalition and instructing the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, the City Hall-controlled nonprofit, to raise money for immigration-related issues.

In some early plans for the start of the coalition, Cities United was mapped out as an independent advocacy organization with its own leadership structure, according to people involved in setting up the group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private planning discussions. Instead, Cities United is now housed entirely within City Hall.

Two City Hall staff members currently work on the Cities United project, and the coalition has hired an outside political consulting firm, Metropolitan Public Strategies, to help with its communications. Ms. Spitalnick said the political consulting firm was paid through a grant from the Open Society Foundations, the liberal billionaire George Soros’s philanthropy.

In late July, Cities United sent a letter to Congress, signed by about a quarter of its members, arguing against a Republican proposal to withdraw funding from so-called sanctuary cities, which decline to comply with certain immigration enforcement requests.

But the group’s long-term trajectory remains a question mark, with different coalition partners describing widely divergent goals.

Mayor Paul Soglin of Madison, Wis., a Democrat, said he expected Cities United to be actively involved in the 2016 campaign. Over the next 15 months, Mr. Soglin said, he hoped Cities United would seek to “maximize turnout in the appropriate places where there are specific primaries and then, finally, the November election.”

Adrienne Pon, who heads San Francisco’s Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, said the coalition’s most valuable role was facilitating an exchange of ideas.

“We’re using the network in different ways, as a kind of vehicle to share best practices,” Ms. Pon said. She added, “Definitely nothing political, at least not for me.”

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com