Here’s What State Leaders Did (and Did Not Do) to Protect Immigrant New Yorkers

Following the tragic killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers this January, Governor Hochul promised action to protect New Yorkers from ICE’s reign of terror.

Over several months of negotiations, lawmakers and the governor hashed out a broad package of reforms that were ultimately included as part of the state budget. The new laws take New York several steps forward in restricting state and local collusion with ICE, limiting the state’s role in immigration detention and protecting the rights of immigrant students. However, they leave significant gaps that Albany will need to tackle down the road.

Here’s what the legislation does – and doesn’t – do.

The law bans 287(g) agreements, which turn local police into arms of ICE by allowing them to carry out certain immigration enforcement duties. Twelve law enforcement agencies in New York have signed them.

In addition, state and local employees – with the critical exception of police – will now be prohibited from sharing New Yorkers’ personal information with ICE, inquiring or collecting information about someone’s immigration status, or using state resources for immigration enforcement.

The law makes clear that “sensitive locations” including hospitals, churches, and private homes do not have to allow entry to ICE, and enshrines children’s right to a free public education regardless of their or their parents’ immigration status.

Critically, the law puts an end to the practice of state and local agencies renting out space to ICE for immigration detention. It also prohibits any state or local government from giving financial help to immigration detention facilities. It further requires that before making zoning changes or approving construction of an immigration detention facility, a city or town must allow for meaningful public debate.

To provide oversight and accountability, the law creates a new Office of Immigrant Trust to investigate complaints of state officials violating the law. The law also allows New Yorkers to sue local, state and federal officials in state court when their constitutional rights are violated.

All of the immigrant protections passed this year will help shield New Yorkers from ICE’s cruelty and allow them to live more openly – which we know makes communities safer. But they are not enough.

Legislators failed to clearly ban informal collusion between local police and immigration enforcement, a common way that ICE targets immigrants regardless of whether a 287(g) agreement is in place. The New York for All Act, a bill Governor Hochul chose not to support, would have banned informal collusion.

Informal collusion has caused untold trauma for New York families, and it recently set in motion a chain of events that led to a man’s death.

In February, the Erie County Sheriff’s Office handed off Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a visually-impaired and non-English speaking Rohingya refugee, to Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents. After picking him up, CBP agents abandoned Shah Alam in front of a closed coffee shop in near-freezing temperatures. They did not contact his family. A passerby discovered his body miles away five days later.

The Erie County Sheriff’s Office does not have a formal cooperation agreement with ICE or CBP. But a clear ban on informal collusion would’ve prohibited the Sheriff’s Office from calling CBP agents.

Albany also fell short this year in meeting the legal needs of immigrants facing deportation. Despite the escalation in ICE enforcement, the state budget included just over $74 million for immigrant legal services – a fractional increase from the prior year, and well short of the $175 million the legislature proposed at start of negotiations.

Lawmakers must provide funds to match this need in the future, and must also pass the Access to Representation Act and the BUILD Act. These two bills would create a guarantee of state-funded counsel for immigrants facing deportation, who are not guaranteed the right to an attorney if they cannot afford one, and build out the infrastructure to make universal representation a reality.

Having a lawyer can mean the difference between authorities uprooting a person from their life and returning them to danger versus allowing them to remain with their family in the community where they live.

Together, New York for All in its entirety, Access to Representation, and the BUILD Act are commonsense measures that will more fully protect New Yorkers from Trump’s deportation agenda.

The pro-immigrant provisions passed by the legislature this year are significant. But lawmakers should be under no illusion that their work is done. They missed a critical opportunity to further safeguard immigrants from Trump’s mass deportation machine, which causes more devastation every day.