‘The New York for All Act would have prohibited state and local agencies, including peace officers and law enforcement, from sharing information with ICE to funnel immigrants into the detention and deportation system.‘

New York is sometimes called  a “sanctuary state,” a place where immigrants can live with the same freedoms guaranteed to citizens and without fear of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

But lawmakers in Albany did not live up to that promise this legislative session when they failed to pass the New York for All Act (S.03076/A.02328), legislation that would have ended state and local agency collaboration with ICE and prevented the use of state resources to aid ICE’s racist agenda. As public defenders in the Bronx, we witness the devastating impact of the coordination between the criminal and immigration legal systems to target primarily Black and brown immigrants and separate families by incarceration and deportation.

For decades, ICE has relied on New York law enforcement to help identify, arrest, and deport immigrants at every turn. Information about immigrants is turned over to ICE while criminal cases are pending, while people are attending court-mandated programs, and after sentences are complete. ICE looms at every step, undermining the rights of immigrant New Yorkers within our deeply flawed system of criminalization. The cozy relationship between law enforcement and ICE prioritizes immigration enforcement over due process and agreements made with the court.

The New York for All Act would have prohibited state and local agencies, including peace officers and law enforcement, from sharing information with ICE to funnel immigrants into the detention and deportation system.

This legislation could have protected MH, a Bronx Defenders client who was reporting to probation in Putnam county to comply with the court’s requirements after his plea to misdemeanor driving while intoxicated. MH was complying with probation and regularly checking in with his probation officer by phone, when his probation officer suddenly instructed him to appear in person.

When MH arrived at the Putnam County Probation Office, he was surrounded and arrested by six ICE agents. MH then spent two months in an immigration jail under conditions identical to criminal incarceration. ICE admitted in court filings that it had coordinated with MH’s probation officer to effectuate the arrest. Indeed, Putnam county has an ongoing agreement with ICE to share information through its probation office that will lead to the arrest and detention of immigrants.

MH’s experience is common. At the Bronx Defenders we have represented hundreds of clients who are in immigrant detention because state or local employees freely share sensitive information with ICE. These transfers to ICE are nearly always without a warrant or any semblance of due process.

New York’s ongoing coordination with ICE sows distrust for state and local agency actors and puts many immigrants in a constant state of fear. Immigrants live with the possibility that any local law enforcement official they come into contact with may be, in a real sense, working for ICE, and prioritizing that relationship over their role with the court process. Given what happened to MH, just showing up to some New York probation offices can result in ICE detention, making every single decision about the legal system fraught for immigrants.

New York’s legislature must stand with immigrants and pass The New York for All Act as soon as possible. Without it, any attempt to address the harms caused by the criminal legal system will fail to protect immigrant communities. 

Stories like MH’s make clear that the few protections that limit ICE arrests in our state do not go far enough. The legislature must pass the New York for ALL Act early next session to ensure that New York is no longer complicit in ICE’s terrorizing of immigrants.

Dan Curbelo Zeidman has been a criminal defense attorney at the Bronx Defenders for six years, and spent the past year representing detained immigrants facing deportation as a Bronx Defenders’ NYIFUP attorney.

Rosa Cohen-Cruz is policy counsel to the immigration practice of the Bronx Defenders and is a Padilla attorney, advising immigrants of potential consequences of criminal legal system contact.