Sanctuary cities list that included East Hampton, Suffolk, removed from Homeland Security Department website

A list of "sanctuary jurisdictions" allegedly violating federal immigration law that included two Long Island municipalities has been removed from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security website.

DHS last week published the list, which included Suffolk County and East Hampton — without specifying town or village — along with a news release that said each jurisdiction would "receive formal notification of its noncompliance and all potential violations of federal criminal statutes."

But the representatives for the county, town and village said they never received notification and by Sunday the list, which included hundreds of entries broken down by state, had disappeared, replaced by the words "Page Not Found."

DHS press office did not specify which East Hampton the federal agency intended to place on the list or why it had listed any Long Island municipality. In an email to Newsday on Monday, the DHS said "the list is being constantly reviewed and can be changed at any time and will be updated regularly. Designation of a sanctuary jurisdiction is based on the evaluation of numerous factors, including self-identification as a Sanctuary Jurisdiction, noncompliance with Federal law enforcement in enforcing immigration laws, restrictions on information sharing, and legal protections for illegal aliens."

In an interview Monday, East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen, who served as village police chief for 14 years before being elected to office, said that none of those criteria applied to the village.

"I don’t know what that was all about," Larsen said. "During my tenure, we cooperated with all local and federal law enforcement agencies."

Also puzzling to Larsen was that DHS had listed "East Hampton" in a group of cities on its website. There is no city of East Hampton in New York State. "That was kind of odd," Larsen said.

In a statement, East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said that the town "is in full compliance with federal law." Burke-Gonzalez said the town had worked with Suffolk County, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) to "clarify the situation," but did not say what town officials had learned. A spokesperson for Schumer said the senator's office had communicated with the municipalities and with DHS, but did not provide specifics.  

Suffolk spokesman Michael Martino said county officials were bewildered. "There never was an explanation or notification that Suffolk County was on this list, and there is no reason to have ever been included. Suffolk County is not, nor will it be, a sanctuary county."

In April, President Donald Trump, who has made mass deportation of people living illegally in the United States a priority, signed an executive order mandating creation of the list along with consequences for inclusion, like the termination of federal funding and unspecified "legal remedies and enforcement measures."

But the resulting list, which was riddled with misspellings, was criticized for including municipalities in apparent error. It included Huntington Beach, California, which passed a resolution this year declaring the community a "non-sanctuary city," and Shawano County, Wisconsin, which declared itself a Second Amendment Sanctuary County, a move that prohibited gun control measures and had nothing to do with immigration sanctuary policies.

With AP