Rebuking Trump, New York Set To Approve Package Of Sweeping Immigrant Protections

ALBANY, New York — Empire State Democrats will approve a package of sanctuary-like measures meant to protect undocumented immigrants from President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign — a direct blue state challenge to his signature issue.

The long-sought agreement between Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Democratic-dominated Legislature was announced Thursday — just days after the president’s border czar, Tom Homan, threatened to flood the state with ICE agents if the measures are approved

“States like New York can and must be a guardrail against ICE overreach,” Hochul said Thursday at a Capitol news conference announcing the deal.

The deal will place limits on the federal government’s expansive effort to remove people in New York state, home to some 670,000 undocumented immigrants, forming a legal barrier to deny key law enforcement resources to federal agencies like ICE and blocking them from carrying out civil deportations in areas like schools, polling locations, libraries and houses of worship.

Hochul also reached an agreement with lawmakers that would ban law enforcement officers from concealing their faces — a provision the Department of Homeland Security has already called unconstitutional. And the agreement will make it easier for New Yorkers to sue federal officials if they believe their constitutional rights have been violated.

“This directly speaks to a big concern for New Yorkers and Americans, which is the movement of so many resources in ways that are unchecked and unaccounted for against the will of voters,” said Basil Smikle, a former executive director of the state Democratic Committee. “We don’t need to have this occupying force in our communities.”

Taken together, the measures amount to a wide-ranging effort to bottle up Trump’s power over New York and one of the most forceful challenges to his authority by a Democratic-led state since his return to the White House two years ago.

It also presents a significant gamble for Hochul, who is running for a second full term this year.

While the deal will bolster Hochul’s election-year vow of positioning New York as a bulwark against Trump’s policies, her Republican gubernatorial opponent, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, plans to leverage it against her.

Blakeman has been a stalwart supporter of the president and as a top suburban official approved agreements that enabled ICE to work closely with the county police. He warned this week that any effort to curtail deportations will make people less safe.

“Everybody in the state will be less safe,” he said. “When we remove criminals from Nassau County, we’re removing them from the state. If you’re not allowing us to remove people who are involved in robbery, attempted murder and rape — it’s insane. It’s absolutely insane.”

Hochul, though, insisted the agreement will allow local police to focus on more immediate public safety concerns. And nothing in the deal will prevent law enforcement from apprehending violent criminals, she said.

The measures also run the risk of angering Trump and could lead to a surge of federal immigration agents into New York — a scenario Hochul’s administration has desperately wanted to avoid.

That threat did not deter the governor, though, who told reporters Trump vowed in March that he would not conduct an expansive deportation operation in the state unless she requested it.

The victory for Hochul — a Democrat who 20 years ago drew a hard line against undocumented immigrants receiving driver’s licenses — underscores how much Democrats have shifted on an issue once considered a third rail for her party.

The package has been months in making. In January, Hochul announced she was backing immigrant protections as the Trump administration carried out aggressive deportation operations in Minnesota. Those operations ultimately led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens and a sharp decline in public support for Trump’s immigration policies. In New York, the death of a blind refugee — allegedly left by border patrol agents outside of a Buffalo coffee shop — further galvanized efforts to restrain Trump.

A Siena University poll of New York voters in February found 63 percent of voters believe federal immigration authorities’ tactics had gone too far.

Hochul is clearly signalling she agrees. The new state immigration measures show the moderate governor is also overcoming earlier disagreements with Democratic state lawmakers and left-leaning immigrant rights advocates who had urged her to take a more expansive approach with the protections. Hochul agreed this month to expand some of her proposals to include the masking ban and limit when federal immigration authorities can be contacted by local police.

Republicans, meanwhile, believe Hochul and her party are overreaching following the Minneapolis unrest. The Trump administration recalibrated its deportation efforts earlier this year with border czar Tom Homan reaching out to blue state leaders, including Hochul, to address enforcement problems.