Earlier this year, pictures of a 5-year-old boy wearing a rabbit-eared hat and Spiderman backpack flooded the internet. As part of an undiscerning and violent immigration crackdown in Minnesota, ICE agents detained Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian, who had built a home with their family in Minneapolis after applying for asylum in late 2024.
The public backlash was swift. Public officials at every level of government got involved. The family got a lawyer. In little more than a week, a judge ordered the pair released and sent back home.
This quick release is not a typical story. ICE booked roughly3,800 minors into custody from January to October 2025, and as of May, there were more than 60,000 people in ICE custody overall. In this sea of need, legal counsel is difficult to find, especially as people in immigration court do not have a guaranteed right to an attorney. Across the county, 55% of people in immigration court do not have a lawyer. Here in New York, 36% do not.
Grassroots community organizations are increasingly becoming the lifeline for those facing immigration proceedings, particularly for minors who, unlike Liam, do not have immediate family members with them. In New York City, the Immigrant Children Advocates’ Relief Effort (ICARE) has connected unaccompanied minors with legal representation and other services since 2014. Without a lawyer, studies put the chances of these children winning deportation cases at just 15%. With support from ICARE’s network of lawyers, the more than 3,000 children they’ve represented have had a 90% success rate.
When that representation is successful, these children can stay in school, among their support systems, and in pursuit of a happy, healthy life in the communities they now call home.
The promise of quality counsel sparked one of the first investments made by the Grassroots Policy Incubator, launched in 2025 by the Institute for State & Local Governance at the City University of New York (CUNY ISLG) in partnership with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Economic Opportunity.
During the first cohort of this seven-month program, three organizations — Survivors Justice Project, The Flossy Organization and ICARE — each received funding paired with support from CUNY ISLG researchers, policy experts, communications strategists and technical assistance managers to strengthen their services.
The goal was to build the infrastructure for these organizations. This type of capacity-building is not always a feature of grants, which are often more focused on funding direct services rather than the organizational frameworks that make them work. For instance, the Center for Effective Philanthropy found that only 30% of nonprofit leaders reported receiving any capacity-building in their most recent fiscal year (as of 2021). This is particularly salient for small grassroots organizations, which are often left out of traditional public and private grant processes that are more accessible to larger nonprofits.
Building strong systems allows them to grow and become more resilient to funding and political fluctuations. This can take the form of better capacity to collect data about service provision and impact; better policies and practices to keep services running smoothly; or better approaches to applying for funding.
ICARE’s path in the incubator is an important reminder of the importance of flexibility. That flexibility proved critical when the Trump administration’s March 2025 near-total shutdown of federal Unaccompanied Children Program (UCP) funding stripped $18 million from the legal service providers ICARE depends on. Providers laid off staff, children lost representation mid-case, and organizations were unable to serve as Friend of the Court, leaving 1,800 children suddenly without counsel and nearly 200 legal professionals facing an uncertain future. Though funding was eventually restored, the targeting of this infrastructure, and the children it protects, remains deliberate and ongoing.
Rather than scaling back, ICARE was able to pivot.
Working with ISLG staff, ICARE shifted its initial plan for an in-court support program and instead launched a virtual Court Watch, training volunteers to be the “eyes and ears” of the courtroom. Volunteers took notes for ICARE staff to use to prepare youth for upcoming hearings and to prioritize high-risk cases. At the same time, ISLG supported the ICARE team in streamlining internal processes and improving data tracking to better measure the breadth of their services. Improving the kind and quality of the data ICARE collects made it easier to point to their impact on fundraising and communications, as well as home in on organizational procedures and policies to improve.
Making capacity-building funds a part of philanthropic and government grants is a key avenue in the path toward building impactful, resilient community organizations. So is getting involved with budget advocacy — budgets are, after all, policy documents.
State and local government budgets are the front line for distributing public dollars to community organizations and developing service models for use across cities and counties. In New York, this includes legislation like the Access to Representation Act, which establishes the right to counsel in immigration court, along with critical capacity building support with the BUILD Act. The passage of these bills offers that path forward.
The months ahead will continue to test community organizations in unprecedented ways, especially ones that support immigrants. But with thoughtful funding, tailored support and reinforced strength at the state and local level, organizations and the communities they serve can come out stronger.
