By Hank Russell
White House Border Czar Tom Homan met with the two candidates for governor — Democrat Kathy Hochul and Republican Bruce Blakeman — on two separate occasions to discuss immigration enforcement and the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in the state.
Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, and Homan met in upstate New York and had “a productive conversation” about “the urgent need to restore law and order and secure our communities,” Blakeman posted on Facebook.
Blakeman has come under fire from immigrants’ rights groups for entering into a 287(g) agreement with ICE to arrest and detain any undocumented migrants in Nassau County. (Nassau is renting out jail cells to ICE for immigration enforcement purposes under the agreement.)
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) sued Nassau County to undo the agreement, saying it amounts to racial profiling and the deal violates the state’s sanctuary laws. But a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed the case, calling the lawsuit “completely unfounded.”
“New Yorkers deserve leaders who will stand up for public safety, support law enforcement, and ensure our laws are enforced,” Blakeman posted on Facebook. “We had a productive conversation about the challenges facing our state and the steps needed to protect our residents.”
New York State Democratic Party spokesperson Addison Dick lambasted Blakeman for allowing ICE to be in Nassau.
“Bruce Blakeman earned Trump’s endorsement, and now he’s earned Tom Homan’s backing for his partnership with Trump’s ICE — his reward for working with and empowering Trump’s rogue agency even as it tramples over New Yorkers’ rights,” Dick said. “It’s the Trump-Blakeman MAGA agenda: Enable this president’s abuses of power instead of keeping our communities safe.”
In response, Blakeman said, “I reinforced that ICE operations work best with local cooperation and the results speak for themselves. In one year, 2000 illegal migrants have been removed with charges ranging from attempted murder to rape and robbery. Kathy Hochul supports criminals and spends billions of our tax dollars on people who shouldn’t even be here. That ends when I’m governor.”
There have been reports of the presence of ICE in Suffolk County. Newsday reported that ICE agents were located at the Second Precinct parking lot in Huntington, as well as the Fifth Precinct parking lot in Patchogue and the Third Precinct parking lot in Bay Shore. County officials emphasized that the police are not working with ICE on immigration enforcement.
Hochul said she met with Homan because she “initiated a conversation about our deep concerns about immigration enforcement in the State of New York” while she visited the White House two weeks ago.
The governor emphasized that she does not support open borders and that any immigrant with a criminal record who enters the state should be deported. However, she wants to see a “pathway to citizenship and the opportunities for people who are already here, who came with legal status, who were welcomed at the door and given a legal document, a pathway to citizenship through asylum — I want those individuals to be able to work.”
She also provided a list of students who are currently being held in ICE detention centers that she would like to see released. She also does not want to see “any large scale detention centers or expansions of detention centers” in the state. “That has created anxiety all the way from Orange County to Suffolk County, to the North Country and Rochester — so I raised those issues as well,” she said.
Long Island Life & Politics reached out to the White House to find out what Homan discussed with Blakeman and Hochul.
“As the Trump Administration has repeatedly stressed, we want to work with local leaders to keep their communities safe from dangerous, criminal illegal aliens,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. “The Administration, including Tom Homan, remains committed to having these conversations with anyone willing to have them. And we will continue acting on our mandate to enforce federal immigration law.”