New York isn’t messing around with its push to tamp down local collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency largely responsible for enacting President Donald Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown.
New York Attorney General Letitia James issued subpoenas to law enforcement agencies in four counties on Tuesday, the same day a new state law took effect that bans local agreements involving partnering with ICE on civil immigration enforcement. And this all all unfolding as polling shows broad opposition to Trump’s crusade.
Gothamist reported that the subpoenas include Nassau County, where Trump-backed gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman is county executive. Blakeman already has established an armed civilian militia that has garnered comparisons to Nazi brownshirts and the Ku Klux Klan. So his insistence on working with ICE — an organization that legal experts, historians and at least one federal judge have also compared to the KKK — adds to questions about how his views on law enforcement square with multiracial democracy.
Rensselaer, Broome and Steuben counties also received subpoenas, a spokesperson for James’ office said. Officials in Broome and Steuben counties have both previously indicated they would end their contracts with ICE.
A federal judge earlier this month issued a preliminary ruling that rejected a Trump administration challenge to the state’s new restrictions on immigration cooperation. The judge struck down a provision in the state law intended to prevent ICE agents from covering their faces while on duty.
More than a dozen county sheriffs filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in an effort to overturn the new state law. In a joint statement, James and Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, denounced the suit and said it reflected poorly on the sheriffs:
“Many of the 12 entities with these agreements have complied without incident, and the vast majority of New York’s law enforcement agencies were already successfully protecting their communities without any collaboration with ICE. The claim that these sheriffs cannot do the same says more about them than it does about the law.”
They continued:
“This lawsuit is nothing but a frivolous waste of taxpayer dollars. The courts have already declined to block this law once, and we are confident they will do so again. In the meantime, we expect all law enforcement agencies in New York to uphold state law.”
Officials in Maryland, Virginia, California and New Mexico have already instituted ICE guardrails. Texas Democrats have also pressured local communities to end contracts that allow ICE to deputize local law enforcement.
And it’s not hard to see why this pressure is mounting.
ICE is politically toxic, and its agents have come to represent deadly, bigoted authoritarianism in the eyes of many. Some of the agents have been exposed for making racist comments, and the Department of Homeland of Security has been held in contempt of court for allegedly withholding ICE agents’ phone data in a racial profiling case. The government has impeded investigations into ICE agents who have killed people, and it’s even pitching states on liability insurance to help shield local officers from accountability for misconduct during ICE operations — a pretty revealing offer, if I may say so.
And that’s before we get to the fact that ICE has been filling up facilities owned by private prison companies that Trump has personally invested in.
When an institution that claims to uphold the law — as ICE does — appears to be a vector for lawlessness, there’s ample reason to question whether local police should be assisting it.
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