FILE - Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman talks to Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump during a 911 memorial ceremony in New York, Sept. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
February 04, 2025 - 4:35 PM
A county in New York City's Long Island suburbs will be teaming up with federal authorities in President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican and Trump ally, announced Tuesday that 10 county police detectives will be given the same authority as federal immigration agents and work with them to detain immigrants who are in the country illegally after they are charged with other crimes.
While dozens of other police departments around the U.S. have similar arrangements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the move makes the county of nearly 1.4 million residents an outlier in New York, where state law limits when police agencies can cooperate with federal immigration officials.
Blakeman said police will check the immigration status of people charged with crimes and notify ICE if they are there illegally. The arrangement also includes embedding officers with ICE and providing jail cells for short-term detainment until arrestees can be handed over to federal authorities.
“I want to stress that this program is about illegal migrants who have committed crimes," said Blakeman. "This isn’t about raids. This is targeted enforcement of our laws based here in the state of New York — people who have committed crimes here and have violated federal laws by being in the United States illegally.”
A federal law, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, authorizes ICE to delegate authority to state and local police to perform certain immigration officer duties under ICE’s oversight. But some states and communities have restricted how law enforcement officers can work with immigration authorities.
New York law generally only allows police to arrest and detain people if there is reason to believe that a person has committed a crime. They aren’t allowed to arrest someone solely because that person is not in the U.S. legally or has been ordered deported. County jails also aren’t allowed to hold someone who has finished serving a sentence, or has been ordered released by the courts, simply because that person is wanted for noncriminal immigration law violations.
Recent guidance from state Attorney General Letitia James advises local law enforcement against entering into agreements with ICE, saying they remain “unsettled" in New York law.
Advocacy groups were quick to criticize Nassau County's plan.
Susan Gottehrer, the Nassau County regional director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called it “a dangerous decision that will undermine public safety and needlessly enable ICE’s cruelty.” She called on Blakeman to rescind the partnership with ICE, or at least release more details about it.
“Most New York counties do not partner with ICE for a reason: when local law enforcement act like ICE agents, they take on ICE’s reputation and sow deep distrust within the community," Gottehrer said in a statement. “Immigrants become scared to speak to local police and under-report crimes due to fear of deportation — making it harder for officers to do their jobs and making everyone less safe.”
Bryan Flanagan, the acting deputy director of ICE's New York City field office, said the partnership with Nassau County is aimed at protecting public safety and apprehending and deporting “egregious alien offenders.”
Nassau County has turned more conservative in recent years, electing Republicans to key leadership posts including Congress and county government. The number of immigrants also has been increasing.
More than half a million immigrants live on Long Island, about a fifth of its population, according to a 2023 estimate by Immigration Research Initiative, which describes itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. They include immigrants there legally and illegally.
In 2019, Nassau County was home to about 50,000 migrants who were in the country illegally, according to another nonpartisan think tank, the Migration Policy Institute., which said the estimate was based on U.S. Census data.
Blakeman, the county executive, criticized New York bail laws for allowing many people charged with nonviolent crimes to go free while their cases are pending without having to pay money to stay out of jail.
“With this program, ICE can pick up illegal migrants who committed crimes … who may be out running around as we’ve seen many times and they are able to commit crime after crime without being held in a state court or without ICE removing them,” he said.
News from © The Associated Press, 2025