Go forward, Blake his day.
Nassau County Govt Bruce Blakeman dared Gov. Kathy Hochul to try to cease him from aiding Immigration and Customs Enforcement in defiance of new sanctuary payments largely barring native cops from working with federal immigration authorities.
The Democrat-passed bundle of payments would ban the Blakeman-brokered partnership with ICE that provides the company house in Nassau County’s jail.
Blakeman, who’s operating towards Hochul because the GOP’s gubernatorial nominee, had a blunt response to the governor’s threats to sic state Legal professional Normal Letitia James on him to drive Nassau County into line with the anti-ICE legal guidelines.
“Make my day,” he stated.
“We won’t adjust to the regulation limiting our skill to cooperate with (ICE),” Blakeman stated, including that he intends to sue the state over the brand new legal guidelines.
The taunt imparted solely to The Publish might put Blakeman and Hochul on a collision course outdoors the poll field in November.
Hochul has more and more usual herself because the chief of a Democratic “resistance” towards President Trump, notably on his hardline immigration insurance policies.
Below strain from the left, Hochul pushed a sweeping legislative bundle to enshrine New York as a sanctuary state.
The payments would ban teamwork between native police and ICE, together with all “casual cooperation” corresponding to a metropolis cop calling the federal company in the event that they imagine an undocumented migrant is of their custody.
The bundle additionally prohibits all federal regulation enforcement officers from sporting masks to hide their identification and permits individuals to sue immigration brokers for violating their constitutional rights, corresponding to getting into properties with out a warrant.
However a ban on so-called “287-g” agreements — wherein particular localities carved out offers with the feds — virtually appeared tailored to bug Blakeman.
Blakeman, a vocal Trump ally, had inked one among New York’s most cooperative 287-g agreements with ICE final yr.
Below the contract’s phrases, 50 jail cells had been set to deal with federal immigration detainees, however just for as much as three days earlier than they’re both eliminated by federal brokers or launched.
Since February 2025, Nassau County has held roughly 3,200 immigration detainees for ICE who had been picked up from everywhere in the New York metropolitan space.
Whereas Hochul fashions herself as an anti-Trump Rambo, Blakeman evoked Soiled Harry and vowed to sue so as to preserve his ICE deal alive.
“We have now eliminated hundreds of unlawful migrants with felony data — and we didn’t raid one church, we didn’t raid one faculty, we didn’t raid one daycare middle, we didn’t raid one hospital — we did it in cooperation and subsequently we had management over it,” Blakeman stated.
State officers have beforehand attacked the partnership and Nassau County was sued by the New York Civil Liberties Union over the deal in a case that was tossed out.
Critics have identified that almost 60% of ICE detainees in Nassau County had been discovered to have felony data, and solely about 5% had been convicted of violent crimes, in keeping with federal information.
Sources near Blakeman, nonetheless, stated that the county solely arms over migrants on to ICE in conditions of violent crimes or when a detainer is positioned on somebody, like within the case of alleged arsonist Elder Lopez Avalos.
The sources additionally stated Nassau’s set-aside cells primarily home detainees picked up by the feds from outdoors jurisdictions.
