Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman says police will only pursue migrants who commit crimes

Nassau County police deputized as federal immigration agents will not raid schools, houses of worship or hospitals to arrest people whose only offense is living in the country illegally, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said Friday.

Seeking to tamp down what advocates called widespread fears in the immigrant community, Blakeman said authorities will pursue only immigrants who have committed offenses beyond being in the United States without legal documents.

"We’re not going after people who are law-abiding," Blakeman said. "If you are here with an immigration status that is not legal, we’re not coming after you. We’re not raiding schools. We’re not raiding churches like they would have you believe.

"This is to pick up criminals who are here illegally, people who have committed a crime other than just being here illegally," he added, citing as examples violent crimes or theft.

His comments came shortly after about 150 people rallied outside Nassau County government headquarters in Mineola to denounce Blakeman’s alliance with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Blakeman has agreed to deputize 10 Nassau County police detectives to arrest and jail immigrants with no legal status just as an ICE officer would.

Advocates asserted that some immigrant parents are keeping their children home from school and others fear walking the streets because they think they may be picked up and deported.

"I’m angry that parents are scared to send their children to school," said Jessica Greenberg, head of legal services for the Hempstead-based Central American Refugee Center. "I’m angry that people are scared to go to church."

Some advocates said they were skeptical of Blakeman’s pledges. Nadia Marin-Molina, the Nassau-based co-executive director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, said undocumented immigrants were likely to also get arrested as ICE agents and their police collaborators go after immigrants who have committed crimes.

"ICE has been very clear that they see everybody in the country who is undocumented as a priority," she said in an interview. "There is no guarantee that what he is saying is actually what is going to happen."

Protesters at the rally waved signs saying, "Stop Terrorizing Immigrants — Get ICE Out of Long Island Now," "Immigrants Make America Great," and "Support, Don’t Deport."

Blakeman "just clearly is saying he does not care about the immigrant community," Angel Reyes, of the advocacy group Make the Road New York, told the crowd.

Blakeman told reporters at a brief news conference at Nassau County’s police training academy that the advocates’ fears were unfounded.

"Anybody who would protest against removing criminals from our community is either very misplaced in their values or they just are stupid," he said. "I don’t understand why anybody would protest removing criminals from our community."

Some advocates also said Blakeman’s alliance with ICE is making immigrants hesitant to report crimes because they fear they will be deported. That makes the county less safe, they argued.

Susan Gottehrer, director of the Nassau County New York Civil Liberties Union, told the crowd that deputizing local police as ICE officers "is not in the interest of public safety. It is the exact opposite." She said numerous studies have found that the alliance "sows distrust."

Blakeman also sought to dispel those fears.

"I’ve made it very clear that our police officers are not going to even ask the immigration status of someone reporting a crime, someone who was a witness to a crime or somebody who was a victim to the crime. We will not do that," he said.

"You can feel safe and assured that if you dial 911 or you stop a police officer on the street to report a crime we are not going to ask you your immigration status," Blakeman added. "We don’t want people to not call 911. We want them to call 911 if they see something."

Within hours of his inauguration on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order allowing immigration agents to enter schools, houses of worship and other "sensitive" locations to arrest people in the country illegally. His order overturned years of U.S. policy.

Asked about the move, Blakeman, a Republican and Trump ally, said, "That is the policy of both President Trump and Nassau County. We are not going into schools with this program that we’re engaged in … The only reason we would go into a school is if there was a criminal there, and I would think the school would be very happy to have us remove the criminal from their school."