County executives dispute federal designation
Officials from Dutchess and Putnam counties say they should not have been listed with New York State and other localities, including Beacon, on a roster of jurisdictions the Department of Homeland Security accused of “obstructing” the Trump administration’s effort to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
The list, posted by DHS on Thursday (May 29) to comply with a presidential order, includes more than 500 jurisdictions, including New York state, 15 of its counties and 12 of its cities, identifying them as “sanctuaries” for immigrants who live in the country without authorization. [Update: the list was removed by DHS on June 1 but is archived here.]
Those states and municipalities, also including Orange and Westchester counties and Newburgh and Poughkeepsie, are accused by the DHS of “deliberately and shamefully obstructing” federal immigration enforcement and protecting “dangerous criminal aliens.”
The agency demanded that they “immediately review and revise their policies to align with federal immigration laws,” but also cautioned that the list was subject to change and “no one should act on this information without conducting their own evaluation” of the municipalities.
On Friday (May 30), Kevin Byrne, the Putnam executive, said: “Let’s set the record straight: Putnam County is not a sanctuary county and never will be on my watch as county executive. We have consistently worked with our partners in law enforcement and encourage the continued collaboration and sharing of information with all federal, state and local law enforcement.”
Despite Putnam being named by DHS as a sanctuary jurisdiction, Byrne also on May 30 posted on Facebook a video in which he accused “liberal journalists at the Wall Street Journal,” which published a story about the agency’s announcement, of “inaccurately” adding Putnam to the list “before gathering all the facts.” He added that “the biased media is wrong and needs to get the facts straight.”
In Dutchess, County Executive Sue Serino said on Friday that the county has contacted its federal representatives — Sens. Kirsten Gillebrand and Chuck Schumer and U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan — “for further clarity” and help getting the county removed from the list. “It is unclear how this list was developed, as DHS has not contacted us with any concerns, and the Dutchess County Legislature has never adopted any resolution relating to sanctuary jurisdiction,” said Serino.
On Monday (June 2), Beacon Mayor Lee Kyriacou read a statement at the City Council meeting: “It is absolutely not the case that the city is deliberately obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws. While the city has yet to receive any formal communication from the federal government, we remain confident the city is abiding by all applicable state and federal laws and judicial orders. Our city and our Police Department remain committed to protecting public safety, and any statements to the contrary are misleading and inaccurate.”
Neither Dutchess or Putnam has approved policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities, and Dutchess sued New York City in 2023 when it began contracting with hotels in the Hudson Valley to house immigrants.
That same year, Byrne and the Putnam Legislature adopted a resolution declaring the county a “rule of law” jurisdiction and pledging cooperation with federal immigration officers to identify “arrested felons and gang-associated” individuals suspected of being in the country illegally.
Beacon restricted its role in immigration enforcement during the first Trump administration, when the City Council in April 2017 unanimously passed a resolution declaring the city to be “welcoming, safe and inclusive.”
Its resolution deliberately avoided the word sanctuary (Trump had threatened to withhold funding from “sanctuary cities”) but said that city employees and officials will not “stop, question, interrogate, investigate or arrest an individual based solely on actual or suspected immigration or citizenship status” or “inquire about the immigration status of an individual, including a crime victim, a witness, or a person who calls or approaches the police seeking assistance, unless necessary to investigate criminal activity by that individual.”
In Newburgh, where 51 percent of residents are Latino, a 2017 resolution largely precludes police and city employees from cooperating with ICE.
One city not on the list is Peekskill, where Mayor Vivian McKenzie said earlier this year that the police department “is not going to be working with ICE unless it is a criminal and there is a court warrant,” according to The Peekskill Herald. Nearly half of the city’s population is Latino.
There are no towns on the list, but Philipstown in 2017, by a 3-2 vote, forbade its employees from assisting ICE “unless such investigation or inquiry is required by state or federal law or by court order.” (Like Beacon, Philipstown avoided the word sanctuary.)
DHS ‘Sanctuary Jurisdictions’
Albany County
Dutchess County
Monroe County
Orange County
Putnam County
Rockland County
Saratoga County
Suffolk County
Sullivan County
Tompkins County
Ulster County
Warren County
Wayne County
Westchester County
Yates County
Albany
Beacon
East Hampton
Hudson
Ithaca
Kingston
New Paltz
New York City
Newburgh
Poughkeepsie
Rochester
Syracuse
Source: dhs.gov/sanctuary-jurisdictions
One way that the Trump administration seeks to enlist support is through 287(g) agreements with local law enforcement agencies. Those agreements allow agencies to assume some enforcement duties and greatly expand the capabilities of ICE.
The number of those agreements has skyrocketed in a matter of months. Hundreds of agencies in 40 states have signed them but only four are in New York state: the sheriff’s offices in Broome, Nassau, Niagara and Rensselaer counties, and the Nassau County Police Department.
In Dutchess, Capt. John Watterson, a representative for the Sheriff’s Office, said in January that “immigration laws fall under the jurisdiction of federal authorities, and at this time we are not aware of any plans to have the Sheriff’s Office become involved in their enforcement.”
Putnam Sheriff Kevin McConville said that month that he had not been contacted by federal authorities “regarding the matter of illegally entered migrants,” although the department “has discussed the matter internally.” The sheriff said he had no further comment “until such time as we are officially contacted by a federal agency and have the opportunity to thoroughly review any such proposal.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted communities, states and jurisdictions that it says aren’t doing enough to help ICE as the agency seeks to make good on the president’s campaign promise to remove millions of people from the country.
According to Homeland Security, the May 29 list was compiled using a number of factors, including whether the cities or localities identified themselves as sanctuary jurisdictions, how much they complied already with federal officials enforcing immigration laws, if they had restrictions on sharing information with immigration enforcement or had any legal protections for people in the country illegally.
Trump signed an executive order on April 28 requiring the secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general to publish a list of states and local jurisdictions that they considered to be obstructing federal immigration laws. The list is to be regularly updated.
What is a Sanctuary Jurisdiction?
According to the executive order, federal departments and agencies, working with the Office of Management and Budget, would be tasked with suspending or terminating any federal grants or contracts with those states or local jurisdictions that the government identifies as “sanctuary jurisdictions.”
If jurisdictions are warned but “remain in defiance,” the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security are empowered to pursue whatever “legal remedies and enforcement measures” they consider necessary.
ICE has about 6,000 law enforcement officers — a number that has remained largely static for years — who are able to find, arrest and remove immigrants it is targeting. By relying on local law enforcement, it can quickly scale up the number of staff available to help carry out Trump’s mass deportations agenda.
Communities that don’t cooperate with ICE often say they do so because immigrants then feel safer coming forward if they’re a witness to or victim of a crime. And they argue that immigration enforcement is a federal task, and they need to focus their limited dollars on fighting crime.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
