My name is Christine Quinn, and I am the President and CEO of Win. Win is the City and
nation’s largest provider of shelter and services to families with children experiencing
homelessness. We operate 16 shelters and nearly 500 supportive housing units across the five
boroughs. Each night, nearly 7,000 people call Win “home,” including 3,600 children. We
estimate that a third of our families are immigrants and have provided shelter and services to
nearly 500 recently arrived families since 2022, many of whom have come into our shelter
system without legal status or access to public benefits.
As Donald Trump prepares to take office for a second time, we are under no illusions of what
that will mean for the families we serve, particularly for the newest New Yorkers, who now face
the extremely dire threat of mass deportation. The new arrivals we’ve worked with at Win have
told us why they came here and the impossible decision to leave their homes was one of life or
death. Our families have faced starvation, political persecution, gang assassination attempts and
many other life-threatening conditions. If we as a city allow ourselves to be complicit in mass
deportation, we are allowing these new New Yorkers, nearly 80% of whom are families with
children, to be torn from their new home and condemned to starvation, deprivation, and death.
Right now, the City is in a crucial moment where we must stand together to protect our
immigrant communities.