By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2025-01-09 23:36:45 | Updated at 2025-01-10 06:51:45
7 hours ago
It was a federal judge who ordered Suffolk County taxpayers to fork over $60 million for the county sheriff’s “violation” of detaining illegal migrants at the request of ICE or Homeland Security, but it’s the madness of New York law (or New York politicians) that led him to do it.
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine this week bewailed the madness of federal Judge William Kuntz’s ruling, which he must appeal — since it’s based on a questionable reading of both federal and local law.
Kuntz found that the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office “was acting without the federal statutory authority” in honoring requests to detain people here illegally because the relevant federal “statute itself only contemplates such assistance where it is ‘consistent with state and local law.’”
But was it truly inconsistent with state law?
Activists filed the class-action lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of “undocumented migrants” back in 2017 — the year then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed Executive Order 170, which claimed to prohibit state law enforcement (and state employees) from providing immigration information to federal authorities “for the purpose of federal civil immigration enforcement, unless required by law.”
A year later, Cuomo followed up with another diktat that federal immigration agents can only make civil arrests at state facilities if they have a federal judicial warrant or order.
Finally, Cuomo in 2020 signed the Protect Our Courts Act, which prohibits ICE agents from arresting people in and around courthouses without a judicial warrant.
Notice that none of this says anything about not honoring detainers, nor is it certain that the gov had the legal power to gag the Suffolk sheriff, a county official and employee.
The only other backing for Kuntz’s logic is state Attorney General Letitia James’ brief asserting that the detention of an illegal immigrant for deportation “is unauthorized by state law.”
Yet even if her opinion is accurate, that doesn’t make the sheriff’s actions inconsistent with state law, as Kuntz’s ruling asserts.
As they pander to one or another special interest, politicians like Cuomo and James routinely stretch the truth and even outright ignore it; other pols and much of the media all too often play along, until “everyone knows” things that aren’t actually so.
And Kuntz, a specialist in commercial and labor litigation before President Barack Obama named him to the federal bench in 2011, apparently bought into one of those not-so things.
Actual state law is silent on this particular issue.
Beyond that, any governor’s power to simply declare New York a sanctuary state may extend no farther than a figment of Andrew Cuomo’s self-serving imagination.
The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office honored legitimate requests from federal law enforcement to detail evident border-jumpers until the feds could pick them up and begin deportation proceedings.
It’s ridiculous for Kunst to turn that into a host of civil-rights violations for which the county must fork over $60 million in taxpayer funds.
The ultraviolent migrant gang MS-13 has been plaguing Long Island for years; even-more-toxic Tren de Aragua has a still-growing presence in and around New York City.
The state’s voters surely welcome federal help in expelling these menaces.
Yet the local Democratic political class (which definitely includes Judge Kuntz) prefers to pander to progressive activists.
Suffolk’s leaders need to appeal this outrageous ruling, to the US Supreme Court if necessary.
Gov. Hochul ought to rescind every Cuomo “sanctuary” order.
Congress should explicitly overrule any state law that claims to limit ICE in its work.
And common-sense New Yorkers need to take state government back from the extremists and cynics who’ve weaponized it against them.
