ICE agents have been acting with impunity for months now — roughly arresting individuals, separating families, assaulting protesters, and causing chaos in the halls of 26 Federal Plaza, on the streets of Minneapolis, and elsewhere across America.
ICE is supposed to be an agency responsible for rounding up undocumented criminals and getting them out of the United States. Such a mission requires a certain level of cooperation from local and state governments – but how can local and state governments be required to cooperate with a rogue agency that itself ignores the law?
Moreover, how can the unmasked men and women of the NYPD, who put their lives on the line every day to keep us all safe, build and retain the trust of New Yorkers if they assist masked ICE agents rampaging through the Big Apple?
These are the things to consider with regard to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed “Local Cops, Local Crimes Act,” unveiled on Friday. The bill, if approved by the state Legislature, would end local and state agreements that permit ICE to deputize local and state officers to assist in immigration enforcement.
Hochul sees the bill as necessary to stop an agency that has abused its power at the direction of the Trump administration. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who also supports the proposed bill, made clear another key reason why the NYPD should not be compelled to cooperate with ICE at this time.
“When federal immigration operations come into a city and generate fear, anger, unrest, local police do not get to walk away from the consequences,” Tisch said. “That makes the job harder, and our communities less safe.”
The state Legislature should pass this legislation and take other key steps to better control ICE’s operations in New York — from reimposing the mask ban to empowering local law enforcement to arrest agents who violate the rights of New Yorkers under state law.
This is an agency that professes to enforce the law but has acted with reckless disregard for the basic constitutional rights to free speech and due process of law that every individual in this country, regardless of immigration status, is supposed to have within our borders.
Indeed, the actions of ICE — many of whom wear vests that misleadingly identify themselves to the public as POLICE — cause collateral damage to the NYPD and other local officers.
That collateral damage comes in the form of New Yorkers being more mistrustful of police officers on duty — and that mistrust can lead to potentially violent resistance. It makes law-abiding immigrants who are also victims of crime hesitant to come forward out of fear of potential deportation.
ICE’s recklessness continues to put the NYPD in harm’s way — and until ICE can demonstrate restraint itself, there is simply no reason for the NYPD to feel obliged to cooperate with it.
