Cuomo Signs Law Banning an ICE Tactic for Arresting Illegal Immigrants
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made his state even safer for illegal immigrants.
Cuomo signed a law Tuesday that restricts the freedom of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants while they are in state courthouses. ICE had already lost a federal court decision on the issue in June, but the state’s legislature followed up the decision with a law to ensure that illegal immigrants would have a safe haven at state courthouses.
ICE officials have said they detain illegal immigrants at courthouses because it can be safer than doing so at either an immigrant’s home or work, and that the practice was a last resort used in communities that bar police from cooperating with ICE, according to The New York Times.
“Absent a viable address for a residence or place of employment, a courthouse may afford the most likely opportunity to locate a target and take him or her into custody,” ICE spokeswoman Rachael Yong Yow has said.
But New York’s Democrat-controlled state Assembly and Democrat-controlled state Senate felt differently, and passed a law in the summer requiring that ICE have a warrant signed by a judge for the arrest of an illegal immigrant before carrying out the arrest in a state courthouse, according to WNBC-TV.
An arrest with either no warrant or what’s known as an administrative warrant, which is not signed by a judge, is banned.
The new law was not popular among those worried about illegal immigrants and crime.
New York Gov. Cuomo signs Protect Our Courts Act prohibiting ICE from making arrests in state courthouseshttps://t.co/tEdTJpu4h3
This guy just can’t stop making New York streets more dangerous for all of us. No wonder everyone is leaving— Maria Pollio (@ignemetaquam) December 16, 2020
Cuomo Signs Law Inhibiting ICE Arrests in State Courthouses. @NYGovCuomo
Says it’s unlawful to uphold the law #LiberalismIsAMentalDisorderhttps://t.co/6iy9o6qTAf— Brian Ostrom (Parler: RedSeaAZ) (@BajaHoncho) December 16, 2020
Cuomo Signs Law Inhibiting ICE Arrests in State Courthouseshttps://t.co/hNmvjxiBUh – The Democrats continue their love affair with illegal aliens.
— Michael A. Bush (@MichaelABush1) December 16, 2020
“Unlike this federal government, New York has always protected our immigrant communities,” Cuomo said in a news release.
“This legislation will ensure every New Yorker can have their day in court without fear of being unfairly targeted by ICE or other federal immigration authorities.”
The political nature of the law was noted in a comment from Democratic state Sen. Brad Hoylman.
“This new law is a powerful rebuke to the outgoing Trump administration and their immigration policies that have undermined our judicial system. After today, New York’s courts will no longer be hunting grounds for federal agents attempting to round-up and initiate deportation proceedings against immigrants,” he said in a statement.
Likewise, Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, who sponsored the bill, noted, “The individual rights granted to all New Yorkers by the U.S. Constitution should not be dependent upon who holds the office of the presidency.”
In June, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff effectively issued a ban on ICE arresting illegal immigrants on state courthouse grounds.
“Recent events confirm the need for freely and fully functioning state courts, not least in the State of New York,” Rakoff wrote in his decision, according to The Times.
“But it is one thing for the state courts to try to deal with the impediments brought on by a pandemic, and quite another for them to have to grapple with disruptions and intimidations artificially imposed by an agency of the federal government in violation of longstanding privileges and fundamental principles of federalism and of separation of powers,” wrote Rakoff, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton.
The legislation signed into law Tuesday had the backing of New York liberals.
“ICE’s malicious practice of arresting people at courthouses strikes at the heart of the due process rights our court system is built to protect,” New York Civil Liberties Union policy counsel Zachary Ahmad, told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in July.
“Allowing this practice to continue would have a chilling effect that would prohibit people from seeking justice in the courts for reasonable fear of profiling and arrest.”
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