The district office of New York Rep. Dan Goldman has undergone a renovation of sorts. Over the past year, amid the typical operations for constituent services, a small immigration triage center has taken shape.

It’s not a flashy setup — a folding table where people can meet with an outside immigration attorney and fill out paperwork, and a collection of old toys nearby for kids to play with as adults discuss the issues they’re facing. But for this House Democrat, helping immigrants in his district navigate the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign is a tangible action he can take while his party lacks much legislative power to push back.

Now, Goldman and his team are sharing with other lawmakers’ offices what they’ve learned from advocating for constituents as Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s tactics grow more aggressive.

This month, Goldman and his team, in conjunction with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, hosted an event to educate staffers on Capitol Hill about their triage center and the best practices that had come from working with community groups. More than 100 staffers from several congressional offices attended, Goldman’s office said.

“As we have been doing this work, we have realized that we had to create certain systems and protocols and policies and pushbacks in order to be able to stand up and show up for our constituents,” said Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez, a member of the CHC who spoke at the event and whose district was hit by a surge in federal immigration agents last year as part of Operation Midway Blitz.

“In Chicago, we had to learn on the ground how to help deploy deportation defense teams, rapid-response teams and mutual aid across the city of Chicago and its suburbs, and we have to take every single tool at our disposal to be able to do that work to protect the constituents,” said Ramirez, a Democrat.

About a year ago, Goldman walked toward his district office near New York’s City Hall and saw masked ICE officers detaining people who were exiting a nearby courthouse. For weeks after that, Goldman and his staff returned to the courthouse to act as witnesses to arrests or to accompany constituents to hearings.

The small triage center quickly took shape in the district office, and a year in, Goldman’s team said it has helped secure the release of 36 people who were detained at 26 Federal Plaza. Their work has included coordinating with immigrants and their families ahead of court appearances, connecting with community organizations that provide services the legislative office cannot and working with immigrants to secure congressional privacy release forms that allow Goldman’s team to advocate on behalf of those detained.

After a year’s worth of successes and failures, Goldman and his staff are working to amplify and spread their tools and techniques.

“So much of what we did at that time was just trying to figure out what was going on, what the basis [is] for these arrests,” Goldman said of the first months of his office’s immigration advocacy work, “and it evolved over time to really be monitoring these cases so that we could follow them through the system.”

After struggling to find meaningful ways to push back against the immigration policies of a Republican Party that controls both chambers of Congress and the White House, Goldman’s team says they’ve landed on ways to shift the outcomes of some immigrants’ cases and yield success for constituents caught in ICE’s web.

“We’ve had so many cases where the more pressure we put, we’ve seen cases where folks are released, we’ve seen cases where someone, where the legal counsel is able to get a signature, we’ve seen cases where we’re able to bring an insulin shot to someone who is detained and needs the insulin medication,” said John Blasco, Goldman’s interim chief of staff. “We’ve been able to get work authorization cards back, so pressure, pressure, pressure, and be creative.”

One of the tools that Goldman’s team found effective was collecting information through an intake form so they can file a habeas petition — a legal document challenging federal custody. For such petitions to stand a chance as ICE moves to transfer detainees across state lines, the person in custody must still be in the jurisdiction where they were detained.

Ben Remy, a senior coordinating attorney at New York Legal Assistance Group who helps facilitate some of the casework, said that when they learn a constituent was detained, Goldman’s office, or the organizations they work with, moves quickly to file the petition.

“[Immigration officials] know we’re doing these habeas petitions,” Remy said. “We’ve done enough of them at this point that they know what we’re doing, so what we’ve actually seen is they will try to transfer people out sometimes the same day, or usually the next day, so that we lose jurisdiction in the Southern District of New York to bring those cases. So saving that time, so that we can get to the actual filing as quickly as possible, is absolutely paramount.”

A DHS spokesperson said in a statement to NOTUS that “claims that transfers of detainees are being ‘weaponized’” are “categorically false.”

“The agency makes a custody determination based on bed space and ensures their presence for immigration proceedings or removal from the United States,” the spokesperson continued.

Goldman and his team said they use every tool at their disposal, including working with federal immigration officials where possible.They’ve tried to maintain working relationships with Department of Homeland Security officials as a means to reach their goals, including by calling to ask about constituent cases or to facilitate oversight visits to detention and processing facilities.

The district team has had to manage the influx of immigration cases in addition to their other congressional responsibilities. Longstanding community networks are key to managing it all, according to Betsy Schmid, Goldman’s district deputy director.

“If we showed up every time we were asked to do an accompaniment, we would do no other work,” Schmid said. “The district staff is small; I could have someone on our staff in every courtroom, we would just have no one in the office. So we just have to trust our partners that they’re going to be the ones to do it. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I trust this group. They’re going to be there for you, and if anything happens, they’re calling me, and I will support you.”