Felixr1/nyc-immigrant-services

NYC Immigrant Services Knowledge Graph

A small, source-cited knowledge graph of public programs and service locations for immigrant New Yorkers, built in one day at the Latinos x AI Hackathon NYC (Immigration track, 2026-10-10). It goes deep in Corona, Queens (ZIPs 11368, 11373, 11372) and shallow across the rest of NYC. It powers an AI navigator that answers in Spanish and English.

This is reference data, not legal advice. Every row has a source_url and a last_checked date. Call ahead before going anywhere.

Files

File	Rows	What it is
programs.csv	105	Benefits and programs (SNAP, WIC, IDNYC, NYS DREAM Act, lending circles...) with plain-language summaries in Spanish and English, who can use them, what to bring, how to apply
places.csv	661	Physical locations: food pantries, WIC clinics, DOJ-listed immigration legal offices, IDNYC and HRA centers, libraries, consulates, check cashers (28 in the Corona-area demo ZIPs)
links.csv	38	Typed edges: offers (place to program), unlocks, pairs_with, requires, refers_to (program to program), each with a one-line reason

Lists are pipe-separated (food|legal); languages are ISO codes; booleans are true/false, blank when unknown.

Trust levels

• official (653): the facts come from a government source (NYC Open Data, NYC agencies, NYS, the U.S. Department of Justice EOIR lists, a consulate's own government site). This does not certify current capacity, cost or wait times, and a DOJ listing is not a DOJ endorsement.
• verified (1): a person on our team confirmed it by phone on the check date.
• unverified (7): from a provider's own web page, not yet confirmed by phone.

Place types: pantry 523, doj_roster 99, doj_pro_bono 12, clinic 7, benefits_office 5, consulate 4, other 3, school 3, check_casher 3, idnyc 2.

Sources

• NYC Benefits and Programs dataset (NYC Open Data kvhd-5fmu)
• Food Help NYC, the City's food pantry and soup kitchen finder (its public data layer)
• U.S. DOJ EOIR Recognized Organizations and Accredited Representatives roster, and List of Pro Bono Legal Service Providers (NYC immigration courts)
• NYS Department of Agriculture WIC agency list; NYC Health + Hospitals; NYC HRA; IDNYC; NYC Public Schools; Queens Public Library
• Program pages: NYS HESC (DREAM Act), NYC Public Schools (McKinney-Vento transportation, NYC Schools Account), NYC DCA Immigrant Financial Services Study (tandas), Mission Asset Fund (lending circles)
• Census Geocoder for coordinates, kept only when the geocoder's ZIP and county agree with the stated address

What is left out of this public release

• Names of individual DOJ-accredited representatives. Check a person on the official roster instead: https://www.justice.gov/eoir/recognition-accreditation-roster-reports. Someone missing from our data or the roster is not proof of fraud; ask a free legal provider.
• Locations taken from a money-transfer company's agent locator.
• Anything about the people who use the navigator. The dataset contains no resident data.

Known limits

• Built in one day. Hours and phone numbers change; a phone spot-check of 8 places found wrong numbers and hours that differed from listings.
• Languages spoken are mostly unknown (blank) because few sources state them.
• Some relationships people expect (for example WIC with Child Health Plus) are not linked because no source we found states them.

Citation

Latinos x AI Hackathon NYC 2026, Immigration track team. Data pipeline: pipeline/ in https://github.com/Ethan-Castro/Columbia-Uni-Hackathon (if that repository is public).