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 admitted that enacting state legislation would empower New York to resist a federal anti-immigrant agenda more effectively.
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.”
