New York sheriffs go after NY Democrats’ effort to ban state and local police cooperation with ICE

Fifteen New York sheriffs are suing Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and the state’s Democratic attorney general, Letitia James, over a new state law that bans state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. The sheriffs say the law is interfering with how they protect their communities.Sheriffs from across the sanctuary state said at a Tuesday press conference that the newly enacted Local Cops, Local Crimes Act is a constitutional overreach and interferes with the ability of local elected officials to make their own decisions about federal partnerships.The band of sheriffs joined a lawsuit brought by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based nonprofit, on Aug. 25, the day the law took effect. The sheriffs said the state should not be able to legally bar them from entering into what are known as 287(g) agreements with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agreements are outlined in federal law and allow state and local police to be deputized by federal police to carry out select immigration duties. The new law prevents any such cooperative deals.“New York’s law does not merely decline to cooperate with immigration enforcement priorities. It actively dismantles existing, congressionally authorized partnerships that sheriffs lawfully entered to protect their communities,” Dale Wilcox, FAIR’s executive director and general counsel, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Independently elected sheriffs should not be forced by Albany to abandon tools that keep dangerous criminal aliens from walking back onto their streets.”Rensselaer County Sheriff Kyle Bourgault said he participates in the 287(g) program by screening all county jail inmates to see if they are illegal immigrants. Those who are will be turned over to ICE to face removal proceedings in immigration court.“The screening afforded under the 287(g) program helps ensure a person brought to our county jail and wanted elsewhere for serious crimes is not released into the community,” Bourgault said in a statement. “No proponent of the new state law has explained how that law makes anyone safer, nor have they justified how tying the hands of local sheriffs helps law enforcement.”FAA CHIEF FACES BIPARTISAN PUSHBACK OVER DECISION TO WITHHOLD AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS’ RAISEHochul and James countersued on Aug. 27, targeting Bourgault and the county in an attempt to force him to end his cooperation with ICE.In a joint rebuttal from Hochul and James, the state officials said the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act was enacted to keep “New Yorkers safe by ensuring public safety resources go toward combating crime in our communities, not carrying out the work of ICE.”