Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. In the surge of child migrants at the US-Mexico border are some who are trying to reach family in New York. New York One reports that four local nonprofits are already vetting some of the children's local contacts or arranging foster care and that refugee resettlement groups are ramping up capacity to accommodate an expected surge. With me now are the New York City Immigration Affairs Commissioner, Bitta Mostofi and Maria Odom, Vice President for legal programs at Kids In Need of Defense or KIND.

She leads a team of immigration and social services professionals serving unaccompanied migrant and refugee children in the US and Mexico. She was previously the citizenship and immigration services ombudsman for the US Department of Homeland security under President Obama and chair of the department's Blue Campaign, as it was called their effort to combat human trafficking. Commissioner Mostofi welcome back, Ms. Odom welcome to WNYC.

Commissioner Bitta Mostofi: Good morning, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Maria Odom: Thank you very much. Good morning.

Brian: Commissioner, are children who are coming to the border beginning to be resettled in New York with family members they are trying to reach or with other guardians?

Commissioner Mostofi: Thank you, Brian. As you know well and many of your listeners, there are a number of our office of refugee resettlement contracted organizations here in our city that are on a regular course of business are responsible and contracted to receive unaccompanied children to ensure that the care for them is what is required under law and is the right standard of care while they actively and quickly seek to reunite them with sponsors, with family members and loved ones that can care for them while they're seeking to complete their cases.

We do know that there are children here in our city. Now with some of these providers, they have, and Maria can speak with great authority to this, had to reduce capacity due to the pandemic, but have been working to ensure that they have the right safety and health protocols to be receiving these children and to ensure that they can receive more as needed.

Brian: Well, Ms. Odom, you want to pick up on what the commissioner was saying and maybe assess overall capacity in New York under pandemic conditions and how close to that we are?

Maria: Thank you, Brian. Capacity, I think remains robust in New York. I do think that the pandemic has forced legal service providers to be creative to meet the needs of very vulnerable migrant populations in our community. For the children, for unaccompanied children, KIND has been providing services remotely and in-person for critical situations as needed over the past year.

We are preparing for an influx, have seen the rise of numbers starting to trickle into our program here in New York City, and are also monitoring what is happening at the border, what is happening at the customs and border protection facilities, decompression facilities, and in ORR intake shelters and trying to look ahead to try to assess what the needs to be children will be once they reach their cities of destination.

Brian: Commissioner, I do want to talk mostly about the needs of these children as Ms. Odom was just saying in their quality of life when they come to New York. We'll also talk about what's happening at the border itself more generally, but can you put any basic numbers on what capacity is in New York and how close to that we are?

Commissioner Mostofi: Of course. We have roughly had in the past the three New York City-based providers. There's another that you indicated outside of New York City directly, but the three New York City-based providers, have had the capacity in the past of serving roughly a thousand unaccompanied children. Our understanding is at this moment, there are approximately 300 or so children who are in New York City that are based with these providers. In addition to that, over the course of several years, on average, about 3% of children who get placed with one of their sponsors do so right here in New York City.

Brian: Ms. Odom, can you take us through some of that process? I'm sure the vast majority of our listeners are completely unfamiliar with it. Who does a child who comes unaccompanied to the border tell that they want to come to someone specific in New York if they have family in New York, and how has that request acted on?

Maria: Sure. Thank you, Brian. First, I think our listeners should know that these children are fleeing violent conditions and most recently the difficult, the traditional push factors that are so rooted in violence have been exacerbated by two major hurricanes that hit the region, as well as the pandemic and the loss of life and infrastructure in the region. They do approach the US Southern border under various circumstances. Many of them travel alone, a long journey.

Sometimes they travel in groups of adults for safety and they seek to the Southern border for a number of reasons. One, to apply for protection, and more often than not I think in the case the children arriving in New York City that we work with, they are coming here to reunify with a parent or a legal sponsor or a legal guardian rather. Their first encounter will be with US authorities at the Southern border. At that time they will identify themselves as minors, customs, and border protection will treat them hopefully, as such under the law and they will be processed.

They will be briefly in CBP custody with some exceptions right now due to the large influx. After that, they will be transferred to the custody of health and human services, particularly the office for refugee resettlement. It is at that time when the children will likely be in a shelter near their parents or legal guardian and they will speak to a case manager, they will speak to a legal services provider and have a lengthy intake done, intake interview. We will learn more about their journey, more about their story.

What drove them to take the journey on their own to the US and the particulars about their family situation and with whom they seek to reunify. It is at that time, where we learn more about what their options are for reunification and then we will assess their needs in a trauma-informed way to see what other supports they will need both while in shelter, but also after release.

Brian: Thank you for describing that process. Commissioner Mostofi when we talked about this on the show during the Trump administration, part of the context was that the children were being forcibly separated from their parents as we all know. How different is it from a legal or a social services perspective to house and otherwise help children who have been forcibly separated from those coming alone now voluntarily?

Commissioner Mostofi: Thank you for the question. I want to underscore a couple of things to build on what Maria shared, which is the process that she just described and what this normal process as opposed to what we saw under the Trump administration presents is a system that is codified in our laws. Meaning, we have the refugee act of 1980, which indicates that those fleeing persecution or harm can come to our country and seek safety or refuge.

We also have TVPRA, The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which was passed in 2000 under the Bush administration that codifies the process, particularly for unaccompanied children and trafficking and children who have been trafficked that Maria has described and that her organization does a tremendous job of advocating for. The distinction here is the process is occurring as it is required to under US law for unaccompanied children.

As Maria noted, there are some challenges given what we saw with complete erosion of these systems under the Trump administration, but even more so really decades of failure to address the best way to invest in these systems and ensure that they work in the way and with the standards that they're required to under law. With the Trump administration, with the zero-tolerance policy, that effective separation, that horrific policy that resulted in family units who were coming together being separated is not the situation we're talking about now. We're talking, as Maria noted, about unaccompanied children who are coming by themselves, presenting themselves for protections and in most cases seeking to reunite with a family member or a guardian.

Brian: Ms. Odom, one of the issues at the border is children being housed many days longer than the three days allowed by law for these temporary holding facilities. Are you in a legal battle to get the Biden administration to adhere more closely to that deadline, even if it's different from the battle you were in with the Trump administration?

If so, what are they supposed to do with so many kids who they may not be able to find really appropriate placements for that quickly?

Commissioner Mostofi: Sure. I think it's interesting. I think it's important for listeners to understand that HHS, Health and Human Services is mandated as the commissioner stated to take care of these children under a settlement called the foreign settlement. The government has set the guard rails for the care and custody of unaccompanied minors in federal custody during the Trump administration, ORR was criticized for keeping 13,000 beds online, available for children who are arriving when there were small numbers coming in because the Trump administration through title 42 executive order prevented children from entering the US and actually expelled them.

There were thousands of children expelled in 2020 ORR came under a lot of criticism for keeping these beds available, which are sorely needed now. That takes us to the current situation where we are now seeing the results of expelling unaccompanied children at the border and preventing children from seeking asylum and protection in the US and we're experiencing that backlog driven by Trump policies.

Now that is for the Biden administration to address and they have resorted to the use of influx and decompression facilities to handle the overflow and to be able to serve the children safely while waiting rapid reunification with their parents or legal sponsors, whereas traditionally, the child will go from the border patrol station to an HHS facility, there is now an interim temporary shelter structure both on the CBP side and ORR to handle that influx and although those facilities are certainly not appropriate for long-term sheltering because they are not licensed, they are in our view appropriate for these very temporary purpose of housing the children while the government moves swiftly to achieve rapid reunification with the parent and legal sponsor.

We are seeing some progress on the part of this administration and that is a drastic change from the Trump administration. I think the Biden administration is engaging the experts robustly and it is evident that they have deployed across government inner agency response to this, that includes teams at the Red Cross and also civil society. We are seeing a radical shift. It is a very critical situation right now given the high numbers that we are seeing, the high number of arrivals.

Brian: The intent is certainly the opposite of the Trump administration. I think everybody gets that to try to help these child migrants rather than just try to resist their entry, but of course, it's a very complicated and unacceptable situation at the moment. Now, listeners, we want to open the phones for our guests, the New York City immigration affairs Commissioner Bitta Mostofi and Maria Odom from Kids in Need of Defense. I wonder if anyone is listening right now with any personal connection to this situation? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

Do you know any of the children now coming to the border from Mexico in Central America? Are you involved in resettling them in our area professionally or personally, or involved in this situation in any way? What would you like to say or ask 646-435-7280, or you can tweet a comment or a question @BrianLehrer.

I think you can hear that we're trying to do this primarily from the perspective of the interests of the children not so much the typical how much immigration is enough or too much debate, but we are also talking about the policy issues so you can call on that too. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, but anybody with a personal connection or professional connection happened to be out there on the phone or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Ms. Odom, the Biden administration is trying to tell families in Central America that the US border is closed but at the same time, they're saying they'll admit unaccompanied children. Here's a clip of Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Meet The Press on Sunday.

Alejandro Mayorkas: The border is closed. We are expelling families. We are expelling single adults, and we've made a decision that we will not expel young vulnerable children.

Brian: Now you used to work in the Department of Homeland security, is that not a mixed message that encourages the surge because it's a welcome mat compared to Trump and he is saying, "We're letting all the cases who come unaccompanied stay here."

Maria: Thank you. I think what the secretary of Homeland security saying is that we will abide by our legal obligations to accept and process unaccompanied minors pursuant to the TVPRA, as commissioner Mostofi referred to earlier. We have an obligation to accept these children. We have taken the position from the implementation of the title 42 order that those expulsions of unaccompanied children were in fact unlawful.

The secretary does not state it so clearly, but what we are seeing is it's a commitment to accept the children pursuant to our lawful obligation to accept these children and that the TVPRA is a bipartisan piece of legislation that has been supported on both sides of the aisle since its creation. It is a legislation that really should be protected and we should not deviate away from the protections created by this law when things get tough.

We think that the structure, the system, we should always strive to improve it and could have a whole show about how to improve the reception and care of unaccompanied children in this country, but it is not a decision that should be made at a time of crisis. This is the time for us to step up and serve these children who have desperately been seeking protection, particularly over the last year when the doors of the US have been closed to them.

Brian: Well, commissioner, to what degree would you say the surge is serving the interests of the children who are coming by the thousands? And to what degree is it a net negative for them because of the conditions they're having to endure here and along the way?

Commissioner Mostofi: I just want to add one thing to what Maria noted, which is that at the very end of the Obama administration, they created a small or minor program that was designed to try and address the challenges of youth traveling on their own through treacherous conditions to make their way to the border called the Central American Minors Program, which gave folks the opportunity to apply to reunite with a family member who was here lawfully and with whom they could reunify without taking that journey. The Trump administration immediately ended that and the Biden administration has begun to reinstate that.

I think really importantly in all of these conversations, we have a broken immigration system and one that requires affirmative action to improve whether that's rooted in the root causes or looking at the conditions on the ground in the home countries where these individuals live and where these families live and improving the conditions there because of climate change because of natural disasters because of gang violence and so much other things that results in them coming and, or creating systems where you can apply within a dignified, humane way from abroad, you can see reunification.

Like Maria said, we rigorously uphold and defend these laws that make sense because they're about making sure that people are able to live safely and in a dignified way, particularly children. In terms of your question, Brian the conditions are really awful. Maria spoke to two hurricanes that happened in the fall that internally, some statistics say internally displaced over a million children in Guatemala and Honduras, villages completely knocked out. This is exacerbated by the conditions that the pandemic had already created just incredibly difficult conditions on the ground for families to be able to survive.

You can imagine if you have a parent, a guardian, a loved one that's in the United States, the means of survival is only trying to have that reunification and we should defend that. We should be proud that we're a nation that believes that that's the right thing to do because nobody should suffer in that way. Even reporting of young people starving, it's just not acceptable. We have a lot of work to do that includes radical long-term change, but in this moment, we should stand up and be proud of who we are and accept them.

Brian: I understand what you're saying, but my question was, do you think it's a net positive or net negative for this very large group of children that is surging at the border in recent weeks, given the conditions that they're having to endure here and along the way. In fact, let me play another clip of secretary Mayorkas. We are going to cue up an additional clip here that we have of the Homeland Security Secretary this time on CNN on Sunday. Again, telling people not to come. In this case, citing an example of the dangers along the way.

Secretary Mayorkas: We have communicated, we will continue to communicate to the children. Do not come, I was going to mention about a minute ago that we encountered three children under the ages of 10. Three siblings whose mother was murdered during the journey. Do not come, give us the time to build an orderly system that will enable you to make your claim under United States Law without taking the journey and imperiling your lives.

Brian: Commissioner, to follow up on what you were saying before. Can you react to that clip in terms of the perils and what the message from the United States should be to families in Central America?

Commissioner Mostofi: Yes, you know Brian, I find it challenging to speak for what is in the best interest of these families. To make that decision. In so many of these stories, it is that people have been waiting. In some cases years. That they have been trying to survive with almost nothing. Those are personal decisions. Migration is often incredibly complicated and results in really grave risks and consequence. That's not certainly for me to speak to.

What I recognize and what I think we've heard from both Maria and I is if the journey is indeed made, then we need to abide by our laws and to receive them in a welcoming and dignified way. As a country, the fact that these journeys are made and we have for decades done nothing to address a different system that allows folks to apply in a safer way and the root causes or the conditions on the ground that make life so unbelievably unbearable.

That's in my view the biggest challenge and I empathize as a government administrator with the secretary's remarks here. Understanding that we don't want to put anybody in those conditions. You wouldn't wish that upon anybody. Certainly not your own family, friends, or loved ones, but those are decisions that are being made for survival. We can't put ourselves in people's shoes as to what sparks that assumption of risk.

Brian: When we continue after a one-minute break, we'll take some of our phone callers. We'll start with a pediatrician calling from New Jersey. Tina in Caldwell we see you. Who says he was treating recently a 16-year-old in the context of some of this. We'll get to some of you, other callers as well. Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue.

[music]

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue to talk about the situation with unaccompanied child migrants at the US Southern border and its implications for our area with the New York City Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Bitta Mostofi, who told us at the beginning of the segment that there are about 300 children from the current surge now in New York City, and capacity is around a thousand in the various social services residential agencies. Maria Odom, from Kids In Need of Defense, which provides legal and social services to refugee children in New York and around the country. Let's take a phonecall Tina in Caldwell, New Jersey on WNYC. Hello, Tina?

Tina: Hello, good morning Brian and guests, thank you for taking my call. Yes, we got a phone call from Office of Refugee Resettlement about two weeks ago about a 16-year-old who was reuniting with family. After reunification, he needed medical clearance. He actually was reunified with his mother. A lot of these kiddos are coming to reunify with primary parents.

That's a really big pull as well, and unfortunately, the office of refugee resettlement, they didn't coordinate with the families. The family has them at a [unintelligible 00:24:51] but they assigned him to our office. There were no medical records, there were no vaccines. He says that he was in Texas for about 13 days after several weeks journey from Guatemala to Mexico.

I understand these kiddos are spending too long, but when they do get reunified, they are not coming out with any documentation to help them start school and get other medical documents to just start living with their families.

Brian: Ms. Odom would you like to speak to the doctor and maybe you can help her solve that particular patient's problem or talk about the larger context?

Maria: Thank you. Yes, thank you for calling doc. I appreciate that the medical community has stepped up and rallied around these children, particularly in the last four years given the number of challenges and trauma endured along the way, as well as the trauma that the children bring with them. Many of whom have been victims of violence, severe forms of violence and for girls, in particular, gender-based violence, as well as for our LGBTQ clients who have endured persecution. It's important to note that the children come with very severe experiences that they have lived through, they have survived.

They endured the challenges and dangers of the journey. They arrive at the border sometimes with medical needs ORR receives them and conduct a medical evaluation on arrival. The pandemic has created some delays in the state of New York, for example, the children have to go through a two-week quarantine. The shelters have to navigate different rules and different places, particularly during the pandemic.

KIND has recommended to ORR now for a significant period of time to share the medical records with the children so that when they are released and see it sufficient, they have the record of what's been administered, those practices have been inconsistent. I agree with the doctor that we do need to continue to advocate as other providers have done so. Both recently with various administrations and before the courts regarding the obligation to share that information. [crosstalk] Sorry go ahead.

Commissioner Mostofi: No, finish Maria.

Maria: I think that we will continue to monitor. We are concerned that while we support the rapid reunification of children who are currently arriving with their parents or legal guardian. The data so far suggests that many of those children are coming here to reunify with a parent and legal guardian to be safe. That the post-release services will be critical. The process will be compressed, the time in shelter care will be shorter and we are preparing and advocating for robust post-release services to ensure the children are safe. Can receive psychosocial emotional support, as well as the medical care and legal services that they need to be able to navigate the process going forward.

Brian: Commissioner, I know you want to in there, but doctor let me follow up with you. Have you been able to stay in touch with this particular 16-year-old, and help that family? I don't know if that's your role, but does anything that Ms. Odom just said inform what you do, or does anything from your experience inform perhaps what others might do to help others who find themselves in your position as a provider?

Tina: [phone rings] Sorry about that. Yes, I've been in touch with them. I have their information to talk to them. When we called ORR, they said to send an email to request his medical records and his vaccine. We haven't received anything yet. Also, when they called me, when I called the social worker back who set up the appointment, that person hasn't returned my calls either. It seems like they are on this rapid clip just getting the kids to have someone to be seen after they reunify. As your guest has said, the mental health needs of these children do have to be addressed.

I did talk to the mother about when he did the mental health assessment, we call it the PHQ-9, there were signs of mild depression, signs of stress, and there'll be a period of adjustment. I'm sure the mother maybe has an idea about that looking at other kids who've gone through that journey. Our intention is to connect her to possible supports in her community because where we are now is not really her community. Her community is further in another part of Essex county.

We are going to refer her to more support for him as he adjusts to living in a new environment. They'd been living apart for a long time. He has two siblings that he's never met. It's a lot of adjustment they have to go through when they get here as well as dealing with their travel from their home country.

Brian: Tina, thank you so much for your call and sharing that story. I know it's going to be helpful for people to understand just some of the human experience behind what we sell here often here as an abstraction in news reports. In fact, Ms. Odom, let me follow back up with you on that because you said earlier in the show and I've seen it in your literature too, that your group provides trauma-informed social services. You call it trauma-informed social services, to complement your legal services for the minor refugees. Can you describe what trauma-informed social services are in this context?

Maria: Thank you. Yes, we do. We have a group of very dedicated and talented social services professionals with a variety of backgrounds. Some come with a clinical and therapeutic background, others have been working within the community providing services to this population for a very long time. We focused on trauma-informed care because it is centered around the child's experience. It is sensitive to the child's own timeline and addressing the trauma that they have endured. It is meeting the child where they are in an age-appropriate way as well.

Our staff will conduct in-depth evaluations of the children and assess their needs. Some of these strategies may require referrals out to community partners who have deeper expertise than we have in house, other children, for example, doing our family separation family in clients who have a lot of tender aged children and with very unique needs, we have been able to serve them through play therapy and other strategies that allow us to support both the parents and their parenting of a child who has survived very traumatic events, as well as support the child in a way that takes into account their past experiences and their current needs.

Children usually arrive, as we talked about earlier, having lived this very intense experience layered on top of the trauma they may have experienced at home. We take as long as it needs, we need to, and the child needs to be able to tell their story and that is why we advocate for legal counsel for children as well because the child needs to be prepared to tell their story in court or in state court as they seek protection in the US. Trauma-centered care is really focused on not only the best interest of the child but really deploying strategies that take into account their lived experiences and really let the child drive the profits as much as possible.

Brian: Let's take another call. Here's Larry in Nutley, who says he provides expert testimony for Salvadorian seeking asylum. Larry, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Larry: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I am encouraged that president Biden is talking about addressing the root causes of the crisis in Central America, problems with human rights, and the rule of law, but we have to understand that those problems aren't going to be solved overnight. In fact, in many ways, they're getting worse. Telling children and telling families not to come, it's just meaningless because there are many cases where people stay there, they're going to die.

If they're deported from the US, they're going to die. If there were staying on the Mexican side of the border, they're going to be targeted by the cartels and in many cases they're going to die. This is not something that, "Oh, yes, we could sit around and wait for things to improve." It's immediate and it's deadly.

Brian: Thank you very much for your call. I want to get to one other issue briefly for you commissioner, but I want to take one other call first because I think a lot of our listeners are asking themselves exactly this question right now. This does not come from an expert in the field, but Eamonn in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Eammon, thank you so much for calling in.

Eammon: You're welcome Brian. I have two questions, actually, a question and a comment. One, I'd like to know what we can do for kids at the border all the way up here in Brooklyn? The second thing is I'm noticing a lot of migrant homeless people here and it's breaking my heart. I'm wondering what services there are and if there are Spanish-speaking homeless services that are addressing these needs, I'm seeing them all over Brooklyn. When I try to approach, there's a lot of fear. I'd like to know what is being done to address this.

Brian: Thank you so much Eamon. I'll bet commissioner that a lot of people are wondering along with her, "How can I help?"

Commissioner Mostofi: Absolutely. I want to very briefly commend Tina for the work that you're doing and echo what Maria said and to just add to that part of the conversation, to say that, we have for years advocated for better referral services to both health services here in the city, but also the department of education. We've worked very closely with the local-based providers to create systems, but that's an area where there needs to be tremendous amount of increased cooperation and partnership at the federal level and we welcome and invite that work.

To be responsive to Eammon, really appreciate you asking what can we do? I think there's a few things I think for New Yorkers here who are interested in serving the youth that come here, they're tremendous organizations like Maria's, like KIND, like Catholic Charities, like some of these centers that you can donate to or try to volunteer at if they're accepting volunteers. Also, many of this office of refugee resettlement organizations as they're seeking to increase their capacity to serve young people, they're also seeking to have more foster families.

You can reach out directly to some of those provider organizations, if you're interested or willing to be a foster family for one of these young people while they're going through the process of connecting them with their sponsors, Cayuga Centers, I can provide that number now 917-836-4650, which is the largest one in the city. In terms of homeless services or really any services for immigrants in the city who are multilingual, there is a right to shelter in New York's City regardless of immigration status.

If you see or know of individuals that need direct on-the-ground outreach from one of our department of homeless services outreach folks, please reach out. I'm going to give you our contact information to my office which often supports on outreach, particularly where there are cultural or language needs at 212-788-7654.

Brian: Thank you for all that. I want to ask you one question on one other issue, unrelated commissioner, I guess it could be related in a certain sense. This really needs its own segment, but for today, just this one question. You know about the hunger strike that some people are now engaged in to pressure the New York state legislature to include undocumented immigrants in benefits under the coronavirus relief bill with an excluded workers fund.

As you know so many undocumented workers have lost their jobs in restaurants and in people's homes, with restaurants closed and families considering it unsafe to hire outsiders to come into their homes. There's disproportionate unemployment, but no legal status for unemployment or other benefits. Of course, this has been going on for a year. Commissioner, what policy do you support and what can the city do on its own and what is it doing?

Commissioner Mostofi: Thank you, Brian. We absolutely support creating a fund for excluded workers. In fact, we were a leader in the country in the late spring of last year, immediately following the pandemic, we partnered with the open society foundation on an emergency relief fund because we recognized that our system is not designed to support the economic devastation for undocumented families and our city neither through what we saw at the federal level through the stimulus and relief packages nor through our social safety net packages like unemployment or food stamps and snap and other benefits.

It's a really important advocacy effort. It's one that is critical to workers, not just those who've been at risk, but really many who have been on the front lines, essential workers, as we have now lovingly embraced our delivery workers, our food prep workers, our home health aides, these are many workers who've continued at their own risk and their family's risk during the pandemic. We've seen that play out in the numbers of those impacted. This fund is the right thing to do, and it's the meaningful thing to do for recovery for all.

We don't want to leave so many of our community members behind and in terms of New York city's response, we started in the spring with a $20 million partnership with the open society foundation. We added onto that with another million and a half dollars with the Robin Hood Foundation. We've also worked with enterprise and our Department of Social Services to establish a $12 million fund for tenant relief through our home-based providers and all city services around food, health, and tenant protections are available to all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status.

Brian: Thank you very much. New York City Immigration Affairs Commissioner, Bitta Mostofi and Maria Odom, Vice-President for legal programs at Kids In Need of Defense or KIND, she was previously the citizenship and immigration services ombudsman for the US Department of Homeland security under President Obama. Thank you both so much.

Commissioner Mostofi: Thank you, Brian.

 

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.