Hochul’s ban on cops working with ICE is an attack on public safety

Gov. Kathy Hochul raced to gaslight New York on Tuesday by falsely claiming her new anti-ICE law will boost public safety, when it will do the reverse.

Yes: the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act undermines public safety — and good for her GOP gubernatorial rival, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, for standing up to her on it.

The law “ensures that law enforcement resources are directed toward local public safety priorities,” fibbed a Hochul press release, also claiming it’ll “keep New Yorkers safe from federal overreach.”

Utter baloney. The measure bars cops from cooperating with federal agents who are working primarily to get criminals off the streets and out of the country.

It also bans the use of local jails to temporarily hold illegal immigrants for ICE.

“Any police department or sheriff’s office that disobeys this law,” huffed Hochul, “will face legal action.”

How does shielding criminals boost public safety? Well, “we need local police focused on thwarting local crimes,” claims the gov.

Please. Foreign criminals roaming the streets increase “local crimes.”

The gov pretends that letting cops work with federal law-enforcers diverts resources and will somehow feed federal “overreach.”

Madness: Blocking cooperation can only force ICE to conduct more broad operations, burdening immigrant communities and obliging local cops to handle agents’ standoffs with the inevitable lefty “activists” trying to block enforcement.

Her reasoning is beyond flimsy: Of 53 counties that had no formal 287(g) agreements to cooperate with the feds, she argues, “seven are among the 25 safest communities in America, demonstrating that 287(g) agreements are non-essential to improving safety.”

That demonstrates nothing: Illegal-immigrant criminals tend to shun already-safe areas, so neither ICE nor any agreements are needed there.

The Long Island towns plagued by violent migrant gangs like MS-13 absolutely need local-federal cooperation.

Which is why Blakeman has eagerly worked with ICE: “We got rid of 2,000 illegal migrants with criminal records in Nassau County without raiding a church, a school, a daycare center, a hospital, because we cooperated with ICE,” he’s noted.  

By contrast, the Department of Homeland Security reported in December that New York has released 7,000 illegal migrant criminals without notifying ICE since President Donald Trump took office. Feel safer yet?

Hochul is also testing the limits of the Constitution, which gives federal law priority over state law; banning cooperation could count as obstruction.

No New Yorker should fall for Hochul’s gaslighting: Her anti-ICE law is an attack on public safety.