Police in Long Island county in New York will team up with ICE for Trump’s immigration crackdown
Published:Tuesday | February 4, 2025 | 9:22 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 US 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 US have similar arrangements with US 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, authorises 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 US 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.
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