County proposes support of sheriffs suing NY over ICE agreements

CATSKILL―Greene County does not have a 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But county lawmakers are proposing a resolution in support of a federal lawsuit brought by 15 sheriffs across New York seeking to overturn a recent state law barring those agreements.

The 62-page lawsuit challenges part of the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in May, and the newly created Office of Immigrant Trust. Hochul is named as a defendant along with Attorney General Letitia James.

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the organization representing the sheriffs in the claim, New York State is attempting to override “the constitutional authority of the office of sheriff.”

First enacted by Congress in 1996, 287(g) agreements allow state and local law enforcement officers the authority to perform specified immigration officer functions under ICE’s direction and oversight. The program operates under three separate models: jail enforcement, task force and warrant service. As of May 2026, approximately fourteen such agreements across the different models were active across nine counties.

“Albany has now declared those [287(g)] agreements illegal, set hard deadlines to kill them, and created a new investigative office to police any sheriff who refuses to comply,” the lawsuit states.

Under the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, agencies must dissolve their 287(g) agreements, effective August 25―the same day the lawsuit was filed along with an emergency motion seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.

During a meeting of the county legislature last month, Greene County Sheriff Peter Kusminsky expressed support for the then-anticipated lawsuit

“FAIR, which is a non-profit anti-sanctuary immigration reform group, is going to represent all of the sheriffs and counties at no cost [and] believes that this is a violation of the U.S. Constitution and the New York State Constitution,” Kusminsky said. “It also appears to violate the Municipal Home Rule Law by telling you what contracts you can and cannot sign.”

A proposed resolution, on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting of the Public Safety Committee, notes that since Greene County is neither a signatory to a 287-g contract nor a border county, Kusminsky’s participation in the lawsuit “may have a deleterious effect on other plaintiff counties which meet statutory plaintiff standing criteria.”

So, while Greene County is not signing on as a plaintiff, the legislature “desires to fully support” the litigation, the resolution states.

“This is just another example of the state putting politics above public safety. We have a good working relationship with ICE and need to communicate with them when it comes to illegal aliens who are committing crimes against our own citizens,” Kusminsky said.

Mateo Forero, counsel for the plaintiffs, says the sheriffs are not asking for new powers.

“They are asking to keep the agreements they already have,” Forero said, calling the law a “direct impairment of existing contractual rights and a clear intrusion on the independent authority the New York Constitution gives to elected sheriffs.”

In a joint statement, Hochul and James said the lawsuit is “nothing but a frivolous waste of taxpayer dollars.”

“The federal government claims they are going after the 'worst of the worst,' but every American has seen the reality: ICE is terrorizing communities and families with indiscriminate raids, detaining people without regard for criminal record, and using local law enforcement to deliver on the administration's mass deportation agenda,” said Hochul.

“Here in New York, we need local police focused on keeping our communities safe—not serving as de-facto ICE agents, not conducting civil immigration enforcement, and not carrying out the Trump Administration’s callous immigration agenda,” the governor added.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in federal district court in June seeking to block the 287(g) prohibition in the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, but a judge denied the DOJ’s request for a preliminary injunction, allowing the ban to take effect.

Forero maintains that the sheriffs’ claims are different than those of the DOJ, “because they are brought by independently elected constitutional officers whose own agreements are being nullified.”

“They raise different questions about the autonomy of county law enforcement authorities and the state’s ability to override the policy choices of local public officials regarding their resources, jails, and public-safety priorities,” according to Forero.

On August 27, the first legal action was brought by the Attorney General’s Office under the newly established Office of Immigrant Trust. It was filed against the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office, the only state agency that has not initiated dissolution of its 287(g) agreement.

“Compliance with the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act is not optional,” Hochul said.

“We will not tolerate the diversion of local resources for federal civil immigration enforcement at the expense of public safety. That is why we passed a commonsense set of laws standing up against federal overreach,” the governor added.

Hochul and James said they are confident the sheriffs will not prevail in court.

The New York State Sheriff’s Association (NYSSA), while not a party to the lawsuit, has said “the rhetoric around 287(g) agreements shows little understanding of what those agreements are all about in New York” and “have nothing to do with enforcing immigration laws on the streets of those communities.”

“They are merely administrative agreements facilitating, where appropriate, the safe transfer of prisoners held in jail on state criminal charges, to federal authorities, upon completion of the state charges. This commonsense practice is much safer for the federal law enforcement officers, the public and the prisoners than merely turning the prisoners out onto the street, thus setting them up for a future encounter with federal agents in a public, uncontrolled, unsafe setting,” the NYSSA maintains.

Plaintiff sheriffs include those in the counties of Broome, Cattaraugus, Cayuga, Delaware, Franklin, Fulton, Jefferson, Lewis, Madison, Orange, Oswego, Rensselaer, Saratoga, St. Lawrence, and Wayne.