New York is one of many states committing to oversight of federal Homeland Security officers. It comes as reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement stall congressional budget talks, forcing the department to temporarily shut down.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is championing a bill to end agreements allowing local law enforcement to be used in federal immigration raids. However, Julietta Lopez, vice president for federal advocacy and network mobilization at the Hispanic Federation, said other bills such as the New York For All Act must also be passed.
“The New York for All Act looks to protect immigrant New Yorkers by preserving the state and local resources for communities,” she said, “to ensure the dollars allocated for New York aren’t being used to carry out any kind of immigration enforcement issues we’re seeing.”
She noted that some local directives on immigration enforcement are based on political leaning, not what’s happening on the ground. Fourteen New York law enforcement agencies in nine counties have signed 287-G agreements with ICE, authorizing local law enforcement to work alongside them. While both bills have sizable support, the unfamiliarity of the 287-G program makes it challenging to pass them.
Federal reforms are equally important, Lopez argued. Internal Trump administration documents show ICE officers were told they could use administrative warrants to enter homes if there was an order to remove someone from the country. Typically, home entry is only allowed with a judicial warrant.
Lopez said the roving ICE patrols harm immigrant New Yorkers.
“New Yorkers are vulnerable to just being out on the streets and being detained, questioned, put into immigration proceedings that they had no reason to be put into,” she said, “because there wasn’t already any kind of warrant for their arrest, or any kind of deportation proceedings already started.”
One patrol swept up 20-year-old Merwil Gutiérrez off a Bronx street in New York City last year. He was one of 237 Venezuelan immigrants sent to an El Salvador supermax prison under suspicion of being in the Tren de Aragua gang. Gutiérrez has no criminal record in the United States or in Venezuela, and was in the United States awaiting asylum protections. During the confrontation, ICE agents acknowledged he wasn’t who they were looking for, but another agent said to “take him anyway.”
Edwin is a reporter and producer in North Tonawanda, New York. He’s previously reported for the Niagara Gazette and the Ithaca Times. Edwin got an early start in radio interning for WBFO-88.7FM, NPR’s Buffalo affiliate. In 2018, he graduated from SUNY Buffalo State College with a B.A. in Journalism, and in 2022, graduated from Syracuse University with an M.S. in Communications.