"So in the absence of any true leadership at the federal level, it leaves cities just like New York, and others, to figure it out for ourselves," said Melissa Mark-Viverito, City Council speaker during an Immigration Committee oversight hearing earlier this week.

Lawmakers, experts and advocates met to try to understand the problems facing unaccompanied children that have arrived in New York and what the city can do to help them.

"Three thousand children who made it to New York have found themselves in immigration court without legal representation and face the possibility of being deported to countries they risked their lives to flee from things like violence, climate change or to reconnect with family members that are living in the United States," said Carlos Menchaca, the city's first Mexican-American council member and chair of the Immigration Committee.

Menchaca said the New York Immigrant Family Public Defenders program had funding increased to $ 4.9 million. He said families have questions about how interactions with immigration court will affect their status, or the status of their loved ones, and there needs to be clarity around the process.

Under the Obama Administration's expedited program, an unaccompanied minor must have a first hearing scheduled no later than 21 days after Department of Homeland Security files a charging document for the child. Legal Aid Society said 1,077 accompanied children have been scheduled to appear in immigration court, with only 51 percent having legal representation.

"Since the federal government announced it would accelerate the removals process of children, in August this year the immigration court commenced a daily docket of cases. I visited the surge dockets personally and it is, to say the least, distressing -- traumatized children standing before a judge without a lawyer. The most urgent need is legal representation without which these children may be forced to return to dangerous and unstable conditions," Mark-Viverito said.

The council announced it would allocate $1 million from its fiscal year 2015 budget to legal organizations to provide free representation and other social services for the children. Private foundations are matching the allocation with $900,000 towards a new program called the Unaccompanied Children's Initiative. Immigration courts are not required to provide lawyers to undocumented immigrants.

Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Robert Weisel oversees the immigration courts in New York and New Jersey and is one of 27 immigration judges to hear cases in immigration court.

"There about 408,000 pending immigration cases nationwide, about 55,000 of which are in New York City, of those approximately 6,500 are juvenile cases, and statewide there are another 4,200 cases with 100 as juvenile."

Weisel explained the Executive Office for Immigration Reviews is an office of the Department of Justice with 59 immigration courts nationwide, and it is completely separate from the Department of Homeland Security.

Weisel said that some children who have appeared in in court without a lawyer are younger than 5 years old. "It's heartbreaking," Weisel said.

Many of the children may qualify for special immigrant juvenile status which allows children who have been abandoned, abused or neglected to stay in the country legally.

"We've all seen the reports of a substantial surge in child refugees fearing violence, human trafficking, poverty and human rights abuses in Central America. In fiscal year 2012, 14,000 unaccompanied children arrived at the border, double the amount of previous years. Fiscal year 2013, this number climbed to 23,000, and since 2013, 63,000 unaccompanied minors have been apprehended at the border. These numbers are staggering, and I've said consistently we have a moral obligation to address this and work and provide services to these children. We've seen some of the ugliness at the border, how these children are dehumanized, criminalized, and I don't think it's something this country should be proud of, or in any way support," Mark-Viverito said.