Two Venezuelan migrants, reputedly members of the Tren de Aragua gang, were released without bail last week after the Queens District Attorney’s Office reduced their felony gun and drug charges to lesser offenses.
They should have been on the next flight to Caracas, not walking the streets of New York.
Blame the city and state’s sanctuary laws, which limit cooperation with President Trump’s immigration-enforcement efforts to deport criminal aliens.
But if Gov. Kathy Hochul, state Democrats and progressive prosecutors won’t play ball with the president and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, two New York counties will.
Rensselaer County, just east of Albany, has been cooperating with federal partners to remove migrant criminals since 2018, when County Executive Steve McLaughlin joined ICE’s 287(g) program.
The program trains local sheriff’s deputies in immigration law, enabling them to interview inmates regarding their status.
If they determine a suspect is in the US illegally, they can file a detainer and hand the individual over to ICE for deportation proceedings.
Despite Rensselaer County’s relatively small population, officials have encountered hundreds of dangerous, unlawfully present individuals in the county jail — proving that even in less populated areas, close cooperation with ICE is a cost-effective means of protecting public safety.
By allowing ICE agents to take these offenders into custody directly from jail, rather than tracking them down after release, the program also significantly reduces risks to state and local law-enforcement officers.
This month Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, too, signed on to 287(g). He set aside 50 dedicated jail cells for criminal migrants and deputized 10 specialized Nassau County detectives with the authority to make immigration arrests outside jail facilities.
To justify these measures, Blakeman pointed to serious crimes committed by illegal migrants in Nassau, including a Honduran national who raped a young girl and a gang of South American robbers who cut off their ankle monitors with their own burglary tools.
Long Island has battled transnational gangs like MS-13 for years.
“If they know that if there are no consequences for any criminal activity, they do it over and over again,” Blakeman said.
Rensselaer and Nassau — the only two New York counties that partner with ICE so closely — provide blueprints for local leaders statewide.
Nassau’s more expansive tactics make sense for a county with extensive resources and a major immigration problem, especially one that borders a major sanctuary city.
Rensselaer, meanwhile, shows that even small jurisdictions can see real results when they partner with ICE.
Mayor Eric Adams has adopted pro-enforcement rhetoric — but his public appearances with border czar Tom Homan haven’t done him or New York City much good yet.
If Adams wants to live up to his law-and-order promises, he must make ending the migrant crisis, and the crime that’s come with it, his top priority.
That means following through on reinstating ICE at Rikers Island and allowing the Department of Correction and the NYPD to work directly with federal agents.
If the city’s outdated de Blasio-era sanctuary laws prevent Adams from placing an ICE office on Rikers, how about a workaround?
Maybe he could open an ICE station at the Queens end of the Rikers Island Bridge.
Cooperating with the feds to reduce the criminal migrant population is do-or-die for New York, both literally and figuratively.
Subway immolations and gangland drug rings threaten every New Yorker’s ability to live without fear.
And a supermajority (72%) of city voters favor helping immigration officials deport criminal aliens — one of the few things New Yorkers of all political persuasions seem to agree on.
Trump is dead-set on deportations.
The more New York obstructs, the more his administration will want to put the Empire State in its crosshairs.
Dropping the shield around criminal aliens would signal to Washington and the nation that New York is willing to partner with the new administration — perhaps paving the way for deals on critical concerns like infrastructure and the SALT tax.
Faced with a migrant crisis beyond their control, New Yorkers have shouldered more than their fair share of the national burden — spending over $7 billion in New York City over the past three years.
Public services have been overwhelmed, countless lives upended, all in the name of sanctuary policies.
Enough is enough.
Those who come here and abide by our laws deserve their day in court, in accordance with due process.
But those who arrive under a pretense of asylum and then break the law do not deserve the continued benefit of our hospitality.
Law enforcement and local elected officials alike have a duty to collaborate with the federal government to make sure criminals face consequences.
Even in the nation’s most welcoming city, you can wear out your welcome.
Paul Dreyer is a Cities Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute, where Kerry Soropoulos is a collegiate associate.
