Steuben County passed a resolution this summer allowing the sheriff’s office to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Some county residents are raising concerns. Residents in the city of Corning voiced unease about agreements between ICE and Steuben County during the Sept. 2 city council meeting.
Residents asked Corning City Mayor Bill Boland and council members for transparency about any collaboration between the city, ICE, the Steuben County Sheriff’s Office and the county legislature.
Colleen Boland, a veteran and member of Citizens for a Better Southern Tier, expressed that she objects to county law enforcement agents being deputized as immigration officers.
“I ask that there be full transparency with our citizens. I suggest that any and all agreements on this matter be posted to the city website,“ said Boland.
Colleen Boland and Bill Boland are siblings.
City of Corning officials told residents they would respond to their requests for information within ten days.
In June, the county legislature passed a resolution allowing the sheriff’s department to enter into two Memorandum of Agreements (MOA) with ICE: the Warrant Service Officer program and Task Force Model.
The task force agreement allows local law enforcement limited immigration authority during routine police duties out in the community.
The Warrant Service Officer program allows ICE to train local law enforcement officers to serve administrative immigration warrants in their agency’s jail.
The New York attorney general’s office advises local law enforcement agencies—also called LEAs—not to enter into agreements with ICE because they could put these local agencies at risk of violating state law, “given that such arrests and detention would otherwise be unlawful.”
“Any other agreements or arrangements between LEAs and federal immigration authorities to effectuate civil arrests likewise run a substantial risk of violating New York law unless the arrests are conducted pursuant to a judicial warrant,” according to the immigration enforcement guidance page on the state attorney general’s website.
Administrative warrants are different from judicial warrants. New York state does not authorize administrative warrants to be served in a jail. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel must wait until the persons are released from jail and apply to civil enforcement matters. Judicial warrants pertain to criminal enforcement matters.
“New York’s Protect Our Courts Act specifically prohibits civil arrests without a judicial warrant or order of individuals inside, on their way to, or leaving from state, city, and municipal courthouses,” according to the state attorney general’s guidance.
District 2 County Legislator Hilda Lando attended the Corning city council meeting. She has been very vocal about her opposition to the county working with ICE.
“I'm opposed to the whole ICE process to begin with, not because I'm a Democrat or I don't value Trump, but I think it's wrong,” said Lando. “I think we're going about it the wrong way, and I basically did not want our sheriff or anybody else in the county to cooperate and be part of what ICE is doing.”
Lando said that the way people are being arrested and detained is indiscriminate and said that everybody deserves due process.
She was the only legislator to vote no to approving the county’s agreement with ICE.
During the summer, a federal court judge restricted ICE agents from stopping people based on racial profiling.
On Sept. 8, The Supreme Court paused the ruling.
The three liberal Justices, Sonya Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Kentanji Brown Jackson dissented on the pause.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a lengthy opinion. In a post on SCOTUS Blog, Sotomayor said the decision “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country,” she wrote, “where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost,” she concluded, “I dissent.”
Legislator Joe Tobia, who also represents District 2, voted yes but has since stated publicly that he opposes the measure based on seeing ICE agents “going into schools, going into houses. Taking people out of buildings and families. People should not be treated like that.”
“If I had to vote on it again, I probably would give [it] a nay vote,” said Tobia.
Tobia said his “trust and respect” is with the sheriff’s department but he has “lost all respect for ICE.”
“When the legislature is made up of 17 members, 15 of them are [with the] Republican Party, the other two are Democratic, they pretty much passed this with ease,” said Tobia. “Even if I had a nay vote back on June 23, it wouldn't have mattered.”
Neither legislator knows of any undocumented immigrants in the city of Corning. However, both Lando and Tobia are concerned about county farms and their ability to hire migrant farmworkers.
“Everyone’s going to have issues with it eventually,” said Lando. “If people are not coming, then who’s going to pick [those] grapes? Who’s going to pick the apples?”
Steuben County has 1373 farms according to the 2022 agriculture census data, the latest data available.
Kelly Fitzpatrick, the chair of the legislature, said that she “doesn’t think there will be backlash in the community” from this decision.
“We are a very strongly held Republican area, and there [were] significant fears of the illegal immigrants coming into our area because of New York City and some of the other sanctuary cities in the state,” said Fitzpatrick. “So I don't believe that we would really get a lot of constituent backlash from this.”
Fitzpatrick went on to say that those early concerns seemed to be based on social media and that the county was not going to be “infiltrated by busloads of immigrants.”
“This MOA is simply an opportunity for us to maybe offset the cost of some things within the jail and get additional training for jail staff.”
It is unclear what the parameters are regarding federal monies and how much the federal agency is paying the county.
According to the ICE Task Force MOA template, the federal agency will cover the cost of training for local law enforcement agencies, but all other costs are the local agencies’ responsibility.
The Steuben County legislators said they received little-to-no information about the agreements prior to the vote.
Multiple attempts to reach the Steuben County sheriff and undersheriff went unanswered.