Activists Fight to Pass Bill That Ends Local Collaboration with ICE

A constant flood of stories detailing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conducting raids on local communities and putting people, including children, into detainment has become the everyday reality for Americans. Just two weeks ago, ICE raided Elegante Restaurant and Pizzeria in Honesdale, PA and proceeded to arrest and detain three of the establishment’s employees. This raid followed the detainment of a mother and her three children , including a third-grader and two high school students, back in April at a dairy farm in Jefferson County and their subsequent transfer to a detention facility in Texas.

In response, people have entered the streets en masse in major cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City to protest the ongoing increase in ICE raids, with president Trump sending the California National Guard to L.A. last Sunday to crack down on these protestors.

But in addition to taking direct action through protest, activists, organizers and community members in New York specifically have also been campaigning on the legislative level to end state and local collaboration with ICE through the Dignity Not Detention Act. Since 2018, the Dignity Not Detention Coalition, a working group of various organizations based in New York and New Jersey, have been advocating for the passage of this bill that would end all immigrant detention contracts state, county and municipal entities currently have with ICE and bar them from entering into new contracts. Similar legislation has been able to successfully pass in states such as California, Washington, Illinois and New Jersey, and numerous New York senators, like Julia Salazar, have sponsored the bill. But Tania Mattos, executive director of the community-centered nonprofit UnLocal, which provides legal representation and other services for undocumented immigrants in the state, said despite this support, it will be a challenge for New York to pass it during the state’s current legislative session, which ends this Thursday, June 12.

“These are bills that states like California passed five years ago and Illinois passed four years ago,” Mattos said in an interview with Radio Catskill. We’re going at the rate right now of New Mexico.[…] So we are way behind, and we have a lot of catching up to do. Unfortunately, I’ve seen that any good bill in the New York state legislature takes about 10 years to pass, and that should not be. It almost has to be a perfect storm for something important to pass, and I can’t think of a bigger storm than right now.”

While the focus on ending immigrant detention is usually centered on private detention facilities, such as those run by corporations like CoreCivic and the Geo Group, Samah Sisay, a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights who specializes in discriminatory immigration policies, said in an interview with Radio Catskill that New York is an interesting case as the state actually banned private prisons in 2007. Sisay explained the emergence of counties as a particular point of concern partially stems from the fact that because ICE cannot work with private contractors in New York, counties have provided them with another means for detention.

Furthermore, immigration detention as a whole has been expanding, specifically as a system of criminalization against immigrants in the United States, over the last decades, Sisay said. But this increase in demand has been met with a limited supply of federal beds to detain immigrants in, leading ICE to work with local county jails where beds are more available, and pay these counties per bed per night to function as detention centers.

“ Immigration detention used to be really rare,” Sisay said. “It used to be something that was reserved for individuals who were considered extremely dangerous or considered individuals who would not return to their immigration hearing. But over the past few years, we’ve seen immigration detention become the norm. So anyone who is in removal proceedings, anyone who the government is trying to deport, they will try to detain them.”

ICE has several contracts with counties in New York, including Clinton, Nassau, Rensselaer, Broome and Orange — with the biggest one being with Orange County. The Orange County Jail has already been under significant controversy for its inhumane conditions and abusive treatment towards its immigrant detainees. In 2023, the Center for Constitutional Rights alongside legal non-profit Bronx Defenders and the New York Civil Liberties Union had sued Orange County and ICE for its human rights violations, specifically in regards to the jail’s response to a mass hunger strike led by immigrants within the facility in 2021. Sisay described how, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant detainees began protesting the conditions of the jail, including but not limited to a lack of adequate food, limited access to medical care and racial harassment and violence from guards. In retaliation, the county issued disciplinary tickets and placed organizers into solitary units before transferring a large number of detainees to detention centers in Louisiana and Mississippi.

The lawsuit continues into 2025 as they prepare for trial. With the recent influx of ICE agents arresting people in New York, Mattos said many of those arrested are being brought to Orange County.

“I’ve heard it be called hell on earth by people detained,” Mattos said. “They would rather be deported or call out the abuses. These are folks that are just everyday people trying to live their lives, and unfortunately, they would rather be deported than live through another few days, a few months of being detained.”

In addition to ICE, the other defendants in the lawsuit named include current sheriff of Orange County Paul Arteta alongside former sheriff Carl DuBois and former undersheriff Kenneth Jones, who was also a member of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers during his tenure as undersheriff, with the latter two having since come out denying the allegations of abuse outlined in the lawsuit. Sisay argues that the contract Orange County has with ICE not only serves as a source of profit but as a “signaling of values” in favor of them. However, despite its active collaboration with ICE, Orange County was one of the New York counties the Department of Homeland Security deemed a “sanctuary jurisdiction” that was violating federal immigration law on a list they published on May 30 and have since taken down in the face of public backlash over its inaccuracy.

Alongside addressing the issue of detention, Sisay said the Dignity Not Detention Act also curbs enforcement. In cities with detention facilities, the immigrant communities living there are forced further into the shadows due to increased surveillance brought upon by active incentive for police to cooperate with ICE and to keep beds filled when the county is being paid per bed.

“ We have been telling all legislators that we talk to is that when you reduce the beds, you reduce enforcement,” Sisay said. “Anytime you close a detention center or you close a facility that could provide beds to ICE, enforcement reduces because then they have to be a bit more strategic about what to do with people when they pick them up.”

The Dignity Not Detention Act is often presented in tandem with the New York For All Act , which bars any state and local government employee, including police, from collaborating with ICE, whether it’s by disclosing personal information or diverting resources to aid federal immigration enforcement. This comes after the Broome County Sheriff’s Office and the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office and Police Department signed explicit agreements in March to cooperate with ICE .

In addition to touching base with immigrant community members who feel “the everyday brunt of having to be afraid to walk out their house, to send their kids to school, to go work” through initiatives like legal clinics, Mattos explained they’ve been working to inform cities across the state about the act and the issues it aims to address. Although a major mission has been to pass these pieces of legislation, Mattos said they don’t have the luxury of waiting and will continue to organize, including within Orange County.

“Unfortunately, we’re not getting the signals from the governor’s office that this legislation will pass this year,” Mattos said. “But we can’t wait. We can’t wait for more facilities to open across New York state, and so we’re continuing to push leadership and lobby in Albany and at the local level. We are also trying to make connections across New York state, and to come together as a state and organize ourselves in a better way, because it’s not just about passing the legislation. It’s about fighting for immigrant rights, human respect and human dignity.”

Image: Senators Julia Salazar and Kristen Gonzalez and assembly members Claire Valdez, Phara Souffrant Forrest and Marcela Mitaynes stand with signs in support of the Dignity Not Detention Act and New York For All Act at an immigration rally in Foley Square on June 2, 2025. (Photo Credit: nysenate.gov)