Published March 20, 2024, 12:30 p.m. ET

By Craig McCarthy, Emily Crane, and Carl Campanile

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander has drawn outrage for claiming that giving each of the tens of thousands of migrants pouring into the Big Apple free legal representation could net billions in economic benefits for New York state.

Lander’s office said in a report that coughing up individual lawyers to rep migrants could prevent roughly 53,000 asylum seekers from being deported across the Empire State — resulting in an estimated net benefit of $8.4 billion for local, state and federal governments.

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