This past May, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law the “Local Cops, Local Crimes Act,” a measure that bans local sheriffs from partnering with ICE and housing federal immigration detainees. On August 25, the day the law went into effect, she dared anyone challenging it to “bring it on.” So we did.
My organization, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and I represent 15 independently elected New York sheriffs who are calling her bluff. We filed suit in federal court challenging the law’s constitutionality, and submitted an emergency motion to stop the law from tearing up those partnerships. On August 26, the judge ordered the State to show cause why that relief should not issue.
These sheriffs do not work for Albany. The New York Constitution makes them independent officers who answer only to local voters — not to the governor or the attorney general. Congress invited local law enforcement to partner with federal immigration authorities through the 287(g) program, which lets trained local officers identify removable criminal aliens already in their custody. A number of New York sheriffs accepted that invitation in recent years, applying their best judgment to the public-safety needs of their own communities. But now Albany is pulling the plug and branding that override as “local control.”
We filed suit in federal court to challenge this law because it does two things at once, and the coverage has treated only one of them as news. First, as of August 25, New York treats every 287(g) agreement as void. Those written pacts let trained jail officers identify removable criminal aliens already in local custody and hand them to ICE in an orderly way. This is not a street unit. The officers screen people who already landed in a county jail on local charges.
Rensselaer County Sheriff Kyle Bourgault has run a 287(g) program inside his jail since 2018. His office has turned nine people over to federal authorities, including a man wanted for a sex crime committed in Ireland. In October 2024, the jail booked two Venezuelan nationals arrested near the Albany-Rensselaer Amtrak station in connection with a Connecticut homicide. ICE issued detainers. The sheriff held them for federal processing. That is local cops dealing with local arrests, using a federal tool so dangerous people do not walk out the front door.
The second part of this law is just as sweeping. The same statute forces counties to unwind longstanding contracts that house federal detainees. That includes U.S. Marshals Service agreements that list ICE as an authorized user, as well as dedicated ICE housing contracts that have kept federal beds in county jails for years.
Those agreements become unenforceable on November 25. In Rensselaer County alone, federal housing brought in about $3.89 million in 2025. Orange County has housed ICE detainees under its own contract since 2008. Albany is not just ending a paperwork program. It is ripping up the housing deals that keep federal prisoners in secure beds and keep that cost off the local taxpayer.
The State hasn’t missed a beat, either. A new Office of Immigrant Trust sent several sheriffs pre-enforcement letters in July and investigative demands in August requiring proof that their 287(g) programs have been terminated. As a result, Broome and Madison Counties were pushed into sending ICE termination notices they did not want to send.
In St. Lawrence County, meanwhile, the elected Board of Legislators had voted 11-to-4 to authorize a 287(g) partnership after public hearings. Albany overrode that local vote, and now Sheriff Rick Engle cannot move forward with entering the agreement.
This kind of interference is unconstitutional. A deal is a deal, and the U.S. Constitution says a state may not pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts. That is true especially when the state is tearing up agreements it was never a party to. If Washington cannot draft local officers into a federal program, Albany cannot draft them out of one Congress authorized. New York’s own Constitution is clearer still: the sheriff is chosen by the county’s voters. Albany does not get to commandeer the jail because it dislikes the partner on the other side of the contract.
Our case is not the same as the Justice Department’s parallel lawsuit against the “Local Cops, Local Crimes Act.” It is brought by the officers whose agreements are being shredded and whose offices are already under investigation. We asked the federal court in Albany to freeze the law, keep the contracts alive, and stop the investigative campaign until the merits are heard.
Governor Hochul says the law keeps local resources on local crime. But look at the record we filed. The people these programs touch are already in jail for local offenses — robbery, weapons, rape, homicide-related charges. The alternative to a trained handoff is a release and a hope. That is not public safety. That is a slogan standing in for a sheriff’s judgment.
The sheriffs I represent were elected to run their jails. Albany does not get to fire them from that job by passing a law with a misleading title.
Mateo Forero is director of investigations at the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington, D.C.
Editor’s Note: Democrat politicians and their radical supporters will do everything they can to interfere with and threaten ICE agents enforcing our immigration laws.
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