local police in upstate New York arrested Dalila Yeend for rolling through a stop sign in 2018 — then handed her over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The police in Troy, New York, a city just north of Albany on the eastern banks of the Hudson River, held Yeend overnight for the traffic infraction and called ICE. ICE agents picked her up the next day and detained her at a federal facility in Buffalo. For almost three months, Yeend was separated from her two young children without access to her medication for bipolar disorder.
This kind of collaboration between New York’s law enforcement and ICE isn’t new: A handful of Democrats in the state legislature have, for years, been trying to pass legislation that would prevent local police from assisting ICE with immigration enforcement. Lawmakers fear that it prevents noncitizens from interacting with the police when they themselves need help or could assist in reporting crimes or carrying out investigations. Their efforts haven’t gained significant traction so far, but Donald Trump’s impending presidency — and his threats of mass deportation — have created a new urgency.
“Now more than ever, it is incredibly important that we build whatever walls we can to separate the plans of the Trump administration to conduct mass deportations of immigrants and the power of state and local governments,” said state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, who plans to reintroduce the New York for All Act when the legislative session restarts in January.
The sweeping measure would ban New York’s law enforcement from sharing sensitive information and personnel with ICE without a judicial warrant for civil immigration violations, though it does not prevent law enforcement from cooperating with ICE on criminal cases. If that bill had been law in 2018, police would not have been allowed to ask about Yeend’s immigration status and alert the federal government. Yeend’s immigration case was dismissed in 2018, and she got a green card the following year.
New York banned state agencies from inquiring about a person’s immigration status in 2017 and from making immigration arrests at courthouses statewide in 2020. But there is still no measure that addresses local law enforcement’s collaboration with ICE more broadly. That means a patchwork of regulations exist across the state. Gounardes noted that the New York for All Act is based on what is largely existing practice in New York City, Westchester County, and among New York’s state police. Gounardes also pointed to Los Angeles City Council passing a sanctuary ordinance last week. “We’re seeing other jurisdictions stepping up at this moment,” he said, “and New York should not be afraid to do the same.”
On the other side of the aisle, state Republicans tried to pass a bill last year that would require law enforcement and courts to notify ICE when an arrested person or defendant is not an American citizen. State Sen. Jim Tedisco, a sponsor of the bill, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether he will reintroduce the legislation in the coming year.
While Trump spoke recently about planning to use the military to carry out his deportation plans, ICE leans heavily on state and local authorities. Almost three quarters of ICE arrests in the interior of the U.S. have been handoffs from other law enforcement agencies such as local and state jails or federal prisons, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, or ILRC. “It is state laws and state-powered machinery that drive immigration enforcement,” the group notes. “Whether (Trump) unleashes the National Guard or invokes the Alien Enemies Act or any of the other horrific measures his campaign has touted, the majority of people shunted into the deportation system will continue to be sent there from state and local law enforcement. That is the engine of the system that ICE has built over the last two decades, and on which the Trump administration’s goals rest.”
A second bill, known as the Dignity Not Detention Act, would prohibit New York’s local jails from maintaining immigration detention contracts that allow the federal government to rent out their jail space. State Sen. Julia Salazar’s office said she plans to reintroduce the bill in January. That would affect at least three facilities in the state, including the Orange County Jail in Goshen, New York. In 2022, immigrants detained at that facility, staged a hunger strike, and subsequently sued ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and members of the Orange County sheriff’s department, among others, in federal court last year. They alleged that they were subject to racist harassment, physical assault, and medical neglect while in custody and were retaliated against for their protests.
“One of my big fears is that under our current law, the Trump administration can take advantage of local bed space to help achieve their massive deportation and detention strategy,” said Rosa Cohen-Cruz, director of immigration policy at the Bronx Defenders. She is on the steering committee for both bills. Immigration advocates also worry that several New York prisons that have been shut down could be repurposed as potential federal detention facilities.
Trump will face logistical and legal challenges if he tries to follow through on his anti-immigration threats. “Just because he says mass deportation is going to happen, it does not mean that will be achieved,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “He’s either unaware or unmindful of the impediments.”
Finding more capacity won’t be easy. Congress approved a $3.4 billion budget for ICE custody operations for 2024, allowing ICE to detain an average of 41,500 people a night. The mass deportation of millions of people would require much more space — adding pressure onto the federal agencies’ reliance on local and state facilities. (Some states are already keen to help; Texas recently offered Trump a 1,400-acre ranch to build detention centers.)
Legal precedent could become an issue too, Chishti notes: The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized states’ rights when it comes to gun control — and those rulings also extend to immigration. He acknowledged that having state legislation on the books would make it easier for New York to fight back against a federal anti-immigrant agenda.
Congress approved a $3.4 billion budget that allows ICE to detain an average of 41,500 people a night. Trump’s proposed mass deportation would require much more space.
Other Democratic states have prepared more than New York to protect immigrants from federal overreach. The ILRC notes that many blue states, including New York, do not have meaningful safeguards against Trump’s anti-immigrant administration. Only Oregon and Illinois are described as having strong and comprehensive laws protecting immigrants, while California, New Jersey, and Washington are said to have fairly broad sanctuary statues. The ILRC characterizes New York and Rhode Island as having taken “some small steps” toward reducing immigration enforcement. In contrast, it notes five states that have taken aggressive actions that force local agencies to facilitate the detention and deportation of constituents: Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Texas, and West Virginia.
Some New York counties have been more willing to collaborate with ICE than others. Troy, where Yeend was arrested, is the county seat of Rensselaer County — the only jurisdiction in the state participating in the 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws. ICE noted in an email that there have been 358 encounters with “unlawfully present noncitizens” in Rensselaer County since October 2018, when the program first began. That includes 114 encounters since October 2021, one of which led to a deportation.
Kyle Bourgault, sheriff for Rensselaer County, said he could not respond to a request for comment because of a medical procedure scheduled for Monday. Asked about concerns that Trump may weaponize the program to fulfill his mass deportation goals, ICE recommended reaching out to Trump’s transition team for comment. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team, said in an emailed statement that “President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history while simultaneously lowering costs for families.” She did not address the role of 287(g) programs specifically.
There are more than 100 local agencies with 287(g) agreements with ICE across the country. Most are concentrated in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas. “The 287(g) program is the most formal kind of cohesion you can have,” said Zach Ahmad, senior policy counsel with the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It sends a message to immigrant communities that they are not welcome.” The New York for All Act would, effectively, ban 287(g) agreements.
Some immigration advocates worry that a Trump administration will expand the 287(g) program. But they also note that’s not the only way that ICE and local law enforcement join forces. “Often the very same type of collusion occurs even without the agreement,” Ahmad said. “There are all sorts of informal relationships that exist between local law enforcement, ICE, and Border Patrol.”
New York state courts established in 2018 that it’s illegal for local law enforcement in New York to hold a person beyond their scheduled release date solely to wait for ICE to pick them up. But there’s nothing stopping police or a sheriff’s office from notifying ICE about an arrest, which makes it easier to transfer custody to federal immigration authorities. New York For All would prohibit that notification process. (New York City already bans this but has carve-outs for about 170 crimes.)
Today, police can ask whether a person they encounter is undocumented, and share that information with federal immigration authorities at their discretion. Under the federal government’s Secure Communities program, a person who is arrested, even for low-level offenses, could be fingerprinted—and that data is shared with the FBI, which automatically sends fingerprints to DHS to check them against its immigration databases. Sometimes local police call Border Patrol to get translation services, said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. “They end up getting handed over to them and in detention,” Awawdeh said. “If we had the New York for All Act, that would not continue.”
“It’s much more difficult to pass a liberal immigration policy in New York today than it was three years ago because the politics of immigration has radically changed.”
The lack of a clear statewide law can lead to confusion. In 2022, local police handed Nigerian SUNY Oswego student Richard Ubanwa over to ICE in court. This violated the state’s ban on ICE officers conducting civil arrests in and around courts, as well as a prohibition on local law enforcement holding immigrants after they would normally be released from custody to honor a detainer request from ICE. But it took two years for the New York attorney general to determine that the arrest violated Ubanwa’s rights and require Oswego police to amend their policies.
Even though New York City has laws in place to limit local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE, immigration advocates argue that the NYPD and Department of Corrections have, at times, broken these rules. They are fighting for a city council measure that would allow people to seek justice in courts when they feel their rights have been violated. In December 2019, the New York Police Department arrested Javier Castillo Maradiaga for jaywalking. The Department of Corrections then transferred Maradiaga to ICE custody despite the city’s ban on this type of coordination. Maradiaga was detained by ICE for 15 months. Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio later acknowledged that the transfer was an “egregious mistake.” But Maradiaga had no avenues for legal recourse — and still doesn’t.
The New York for All and Dignity Not Detention Acts haven’t even made it to the floor in recent legislative sessions. Democratic leadership has not yet weighed in on whether they will prioritize these bills once the legislative session begins in January. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins did not respond to requests for comment.
“New York is not a deep-blue state,” said Chishti, with the Migration Policy Institute. “It’s much more difficult to pass a liberal immigration policy in New York today than it was three years ago because the politics of immigration has radically changed.” More than 200,000 migrants have arrived in New York City since 2022. Many state Democrats may veer toward being more moderate to keep their seats, Chishti said: “The most important election is not the one you just finished, but the one ahead of you. They’re looking at their own survival.”
Gounardes is cautiously optimistic that Trump’s victory may inspire action on the bill this year. He blamed the bill’s inability to pass in prior years partly on a tendency to demonize immigrants. Outside the Capitol, Gounardes is an adjunct assistant professor at Hunter College, where some of his students are recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. They are worried about themselves and their families and have asked him what he’s doing to help.
“These are really heartbreaking conversations that we don’t have all the answers for yet,” he said. “It’s really important that we build as strong a firewall as legally possible, to say that we are doing everything we can to help them.”
