As state lawmakers prepare to return to Albany for the 2026 session of the New York State Legislature, Democrats are pressing for a vote on legislation they say could limit the reach of President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda in New York. The New York For All Act, first introduced in 2020, would prohibit local law enforcement and government agencies from investigating individuals’ immigration status or disclosing their immigration status to federal immigration agents. It could also block local police from directing resources toward supporting federal detention and deportation operations.  “What New York For All tries to do is set very clear guidelines around when coordination can happen, which is only with a signed judicial warrant, and when it should not happen, which is all other circumstances,” said Senator Andrew Gounardes, the bill’s sponsor in the state senate. Legislators have not voted on New York For All since it was first introduced in 2020. Throughout the legislature’s 2025 session, and especially in the session’s final days, Democratic leaders, civil rights advocates, and immigrant coalitions clamored to see the legislature hold a vote on New York For All, but to no avail. State Senator Julie Salazar, a previous sponsor of the New York For All Act and a current co-sponsor, couldn’t offer an explanation for why the state Democrats have not pushed for a vote on the bill in the five years since its introduction but expressed hope the legislature will move New York For All forward next year. “There is no reason to delay its passage any longer,” Salazar wrote. “As lawmakers, we have an obligation to not just speak out, but to actually pass legislation that will protect our immigrant communities.” ICE spokesperson Marie Ferguson in a statement to Central Current ridiculed state legislators for trying to enact New York For All and related “dangerous and irresponsible sanctuary policies.” “ICE implores New York’s leaders to stop putting criminal illegal aliens above American citizens. We prefer collaboration and cooperation, but rioters and sanctuary politicians will not deter President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem from delivering law-and-order and getting criminal illegal aliens OUT of our country,” Ferguson wrote. Dave Basnet, though, of the New York Immigrant Coalition, said that it is ICE agents, not immigrants, who are upending law and order by defying state and federal laws and norms. The senior manager of immigration policy for the immigrant coalition, Basnet believes the conduct of the ICE agents Noem invoked demonstrates the necessity of the New York For All Act. “We have live-streamed proof now of the impunity of ICE agents breaking the law, federal agents left and right across the country and here in New York State, breaking the law and acting in this way of brutalizing and attacking immigrant communities,” Basnet said. Proliferating ICE collaboration Currently, 12 law enforcement agencies throughout New York state have signed formal agreements, called 287(g) agreements, to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the agencies at the forefront of Trump’s deportation efforts.  Other local police and sheriff’s deputies in New York have offered informal help to ICE, performing security at immigration raids and alerting federal agents to potentially undocumented individuals. New York For All would prohibit such collaboration — and could have prevented the vast majority of those agreements if enacted sooner, said Assemblymember Karines Reyes. Before Trump’s second term started, New York had only one 287(g) agreement, Reyes said.  The agreements originated in 1996 through a federal immigration bill. The contracts have flourished in Trump’s second term. ICE now boasts 1,275 active agreements across 40 states with local and regional police and even some college police departments — though state laws in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington prohibit 287(g) agreements through legislation similar to the New York For All Act. ICE offers three types of 287(g) agreements, each granting a different level of immigration authority to local law enforcement agents. New York’s only 287(g) agreement prior to Trump’s second term was a “Jail Enforcement Model” agreement between the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office and ICE, initiated in 2020 at the end of Trump’s first term. This agreement allows sheriff’s offices to question individuals already held in local or state custody of their immigration status, as well as hold individuals for up to 48 hours if ICE requests. Since then, the two other forms of 287(g) agreements have grown more popular. Six New York law enforcement agencies have signed a “Warrant Service Officer” agreement with ICE. Considered the most limited form of federal assistance, this ICE agreement grants local law enforcement the authority to serve administrative warrants on behalf of ICE, until a federal agent can come to remove that individual and transfer them to a federal detention center. The following agencies in 2025 signed Warrant Service Officer agreements with ICE: Nassau County Sheriff’s Office Broome County Sheriff’s Office Niagara County Sheriff’s Office   Madison County Sheriff’s Office Steuben County Sheriff’s Office Otsego County Sheriff’s Office The “Task Force Model” agreement is the third and most extensive option for local law enforcement agencies interested in collaborating with federal immigration operations. More than half of 287(g) agreements fall under the “Task Force Model,” which fully authorizes police officers to act as immigration enforcers. The following agencies in 2025 signed Task Force Model agreements with ICE: Nassau County Police Department   Niagara County Sheriff’s Office Camden Police Department Steuben County Sheriff’s Office    Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Office On Monday afternoon, ICE updated its list of pending 287(g) agreements to include a new Task Force Model agreement with the Allegany Village Police Department in Cattaraugus County. In Camden, New York, Police Chief Sean Redden inked an agreement with ICE a week after ICE agents took a beloved Chinese restaurant owner from his business and loaded him into a van to be taken to a notorious federal detention center in Batavia. Redden signed a Task Force Model agreement with ICE, through which two of his nine officers were deputized to assist on ICE raids and enforce immigration law. Redden declined to comment on a Central Current reporter’s inquiry. Madison County Sheriff Todd Hood signed a 287(g) agreement without approval from that county’s board of supervisors. Madison County spokesperson Samantha Field declined to answer a Central Current reporter’s questions, dismissing the inquiry as “hypothetical.” Reyes and New York For All’s sponsors argued that agreements like the one Hood entered harm local law enforcement officers by redirecting critical resources away from their local community and shifting their focus away from maintaining public safety. New York City and other localities have already rejected or prohibited 287(g) agreements. The dozen police agencies who have signed the agreements have created disparate legal realities for immigrants across the state, Basnet said. The New York For All Act will establish a “ground floor” to ensure consistency in the enforcement of the state’s immigration law, Basnet said.  “Because of these patchwork realities that are existing across the state, that’s why we need a comprehensive solution,” he said.  New York For All in Central New York In Central New York, local leaders lauded the legislation, saying the increased ICE activity in the region in past months demonstrates the urgency of establishing protections for immigrants fearing the federal government’s crackdown.  State Senator Rachel May said that at a recent senior fair in Cayuga County, conversations with constituents of all political stripes centered on recent ICE operations, especially the agency’s high-profile siege of a food production plant in rural Cato. “Maybe 100 people came up to our table to talk to me or my staff, and nearly every single one was concerned about what had happened in Cato,” May said. “These were people on every side of the political spectrum. I don’t know if that has trickled down to elected officials… I don’t know if they are feeling that pressure, but certainly, rank and file Republicans are.” In a statement to Central Current, State Senator Chris Ryan described similar experiences. Ryan wrote that families, educators, health care workers, business owners and local leaders  have said they believe the uncertainty facing their immigrant neighbors is detrimentally impacting the Central New York workforce.  Those concerned citizens told Ryan that uncertainty is eroding safety, stability, and community trust in CNY. “We must work together to support measures that can be taken to help ensure New Yorker’s constitutionally protected rights are honored, and that unnecessary trauma is not perpetually unleashed when ICE agents engage where we live and work,” Ryan wrote. How would New York For All work? Even if New York For All passes, the legislation’s enforcement is uncertain. The legislation pushes responsibility for its enforcement to the New York State Attorney General’s office.  When asked how the state would respond to violations of the New York For All Act’s protections, Reyes, Gounardes, and May also pointed to Attorney General Letitia James’ office. The law grants the attorney general’s office discretion to craft the processes for collecting complaints, maintaining and collecting information, deciding outcomes on reported violations, and deciding redress and accountability measures, Basnet said.  A spokesperson for James declined to comment when a Central Current reporter inquired about the attorney general’s potential plans for enforcing New York For All. New York For All would invalidate the state’s dozen 287(g) agreements on paper, but the prohibition may not prevent ICE assistance in practice, according to Basnet, the NYIC immigration policy expert. It’s unclear, for instance, whether the Syracuse Police Department’s inadvertent data-sharing through Flock Safety’s national network of license plate reader databases would have constituted a breach of New York For All. Reyes and Gounardes said the responsibility of enforcing state law on a local actor such as the Syracuse Police Department would rest with the attorney general. Should the legislature pass New York For All, it’s unclear whether Gov. Kathy Hochul would sign the bill.  Matt Janiszewski, a spokesperson for Governor Hochul, declined to comment, saying, “Governor Hochul will review the legislation once it passes both houses.” Even after the legislature approves a bill, the governor doesn’t have to consider that legislation until the legislature sends the bill to the governor’s desk. The legislature has until the end of the year to send a bill to the governor’s desk. Once the legislature sends the bill, the governor typically has 10 days to decide whether to approve or veto the legislation. The governor has 30 days to consider bills sent to her desk between Dec. 21 and Dec. 31. The lawmakers Central Current spoke to avoided speculating on the governor’s opinion of the legislation, but May and the bill’s sponsors hope Hochul — who has struck a measured tone on Trump ‘s deportations writ large but critiqued certain detentions — will act swiftly after legislative approval to enact the New York For All Act. Referencing a recent incident in which a child reportedly went missing while in ICE detention after agents separated him from his father, Gounardes tried to imagine the same fate befalling himself and his children.  The senator said, though, that he believes dramatic detentions such as the story he referenced, along with a year’s worth of other ICE raids and operations around the state, have fomented an urgency among state Democrats to finally push the New York For All Act through the legislature. “I think that this is going to give us the political will to actually put in place every single possible protection we can to protect New Yorkers, who are living here and who are contributing to our communities, who are contributing to society, and who are not posing a risk to anyone.” The post Will New York state legislators bring New York For All to a vote? appeared first on Central Current. ...read more read less