Nassau County deputizes local cops to act as ICE agents

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman announced on Tuesday that local police officers will now work directly with immigration officials and even act as immigration agents themselves. Blakeman touted the move, allowed through an agreement with the federal government, as the largest of its kind. But the text of that agreement still hasn’t been made public, and questions still remain about what exactly the enforcement will look like.

Under the agreement, 10 Nassau County police detectives will effectively be deputized as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, allowing them to arrest people for federal immigration offenses, pursuant to a federal judge’s warrant – which local law enforcement does not otherwise have the power to do. Blakeman said that the agreement will also permit county jails to temporarily hold people for immigration crimes, which is otherwise not allowed in New York. “I want to thank President Donald J. Trump and director (Tom) Homan for initiating this program – or I should say, re-initiating – and finally giving the ICE agents and local law enforcement the ability to do their job,” Blakeman said.

The enforcement model is allowed through what is known as a 287(g) agreement with the federal government. Only one other county in the state currently has such an agreement – Rensselaer County. In 2020, the upstate county signed an agreement with ICE to operate under what is known as the “jail enforcement model.” That allows county jails to hold someone at the behest of immigration agents for up to 72 hours after their otherwise scheduled release but does not allow members of the local sheriff’s department to act as ICE agents.

Nassau County presumably would operate under the agreement’s “warrant service officer” model, which permits trained local law enforcement to act as ICE agents. However, the agreement still isn’t public, so its exact details are still unclear. ICE publishes every 287(g) agreement it has entered into on its website, and as of Wednesday afternoon, Nassau County’s agreement was still not posted online. A spokesperson for Blakeman said he would get the document from the police department but did not provide it before publication. A spokesperson for the Nassau County Legislature’s minority Democratic conference said that members have not seen a copy of the agreement yet.

Both the New York Civil Liberties Union and Latino Justice PRLDEF are attempting to obtain the agreement as well. Upon first hearing the announcement, Latino Justice supervising counsel Andrew Case said that it wasn’t even clear under what authority Blakeman made his announcement. Case said that it seemed possible that Blakeman was relying on a recent federal memo finding a “mass influx of immigrants.” Under an existing statute, such a finding would allow the short-term deputization of local law enforcement for immigration purposes. Although immigrant advocates consider the new memo legally dubious, Texas Gov. Greg Abott used the provision to announce a federal partnership allowing the National Guard to act as ICE agents. “They at least published the agreement,” Case said of Texas. “So we can look at the agreement, we can evaluate the agreement, we can determine whether the agreement meets the standards of the law.”

Although both Blakeman and Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder stressed that the officers would be involved in targeted enforcement against known criminals rather than broad raids, Ryder said that Nassau would still hand over any person found to be undocumented in the course of any investigation to ICE for a civil hearing. He also suggested that any of the 10 detectives now deputized as ICE agents could ask any resident about their immigration status at any point they are acting in their immigration capacity.

But Case said that would potentially be beyond the scope of what deputized law enforcement would actually be allowed to do. He suggested that while arresting someone with a warrant and holding them for ICE would be allowed, blanket requests for immigration status in the course of that investigation may not be given restrictions for ICE agents as it relates to probable cause. “I don't know exactly what they're doing, and you need to test it against what people actually do,” Case said. “Sometimes people say things at a press conference that are a little bit more robust than their actual policy is.” He also said that the warrant service officer agreements are also ripe for racial profiling issues, which the Nassau County Police Department has been hit for in the past. The department has faced racial profiling lawsuits, been accused in a class action lawsuit of racial bias in hiring and is being sued over language access.

Under a 287(g) agreement, local law enforcement must undergo four weeks of training before they can act as immigration agents. Neither Blakeman nor Ryder mentioned such training when announcing the new agreement, so it’s not clear whether the training has already taken place, or if it still needs to take place. A spokesperson for Blakeman did respond to a question about the timing of the training.

New York law currently permits 287(g) agreements even though the state has a number of sanctuary provisions to limit cooperation with ICE. But a bill pushed by immigrant advocates called the New York for All Act would ban the agreements statewide. With Gov. Kathy Hochul expressing her openness to working with immigration officials to deport criminals, and new Siena polling showing New Yorkers’ support for some deportation efforts, the future of the legislation is murky. It has never passed in either chamber before.

A spokesperson for Hochul declined to comment on the new Nassau County agreement, and did not directly answer when asked whether the governor would support banning 287(g) agreements. “We understand different municipalities have varying policies regarding cooperation with federal immigration authorities,” spokesperson Matthew Janiszewski said. “The New York State Police can coordinate with federal immigration authorities concerning criminal matters if there is a judicial warrant for an arrest. While we won't comment on individual cases, Governor Hochul is committed to cracking down on violent criminals and protecting law-abiding families."