Nassau must sever ties with ICE, and New York should bar partnering with immigration officials, coalition says

Representatives from more than 20 Long Island community groups urged Nassau County to sever its partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a news conference on Thursday in Hempstead.

The community advocates also urged state lawmakers to approve legislation — the New York For All Act — that would bar state and local agencies from collaborating with federal immigration officials.

One speaker said immigrants detained at the Nassau County Correctional facility as part of Nassau’s 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement face horrid conditions, including overcrowding, inadequate heating and a lack of food and water. More than half held through mid-October, the most recent information available, did not have a criminal record, according to data obtained by Newsday.

"We have never seen conditions that now exist in the Nassau County jail as deplorable as they are currently," said Serena Martin, executive director of New Hour for Women and Children, which has provided services to women incarcerated on Long Island for 14 years.

The news conference, held at the Hempstead law offices of civil rights attorney Fred Brewington, was organized by Corridor Counts, a coalition of the Long Island organizations represented at the event, and by Long Island Advocates for Police Accountability, which pushes for transparency and accountability in law enforcement.

"We’ve decided to come together to speak in one voice in saying, ‘ICE no more,’ " said Brewington, a member of LIAPA. "ICE needs to be out."

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a supporter of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy and the Republican candidate for governor, announced in February 2025 that the Nassau police department would assign 10 detectives to work with ICE under a 287(g) agreement. The agreement is named after a provision in federal law that allows ICE to deputize local officers for immigration enforcement. The county also agreed to set aside 50 jail cells for immigrants without documentation who are facing criminal charges.

In a statement to Newsday on Thursday afternoon, Blakeman said immigrants with criminal records had been removed from Nassau County since his administration began cooperating with ICE, "making it safer for the men, women and children who live in our communities."

Sonia Arora of the Long Island Immigrant Justice Alliance said she attended the news conference because of an 8-year-old girl whose father is detained.

"Her world has been turned upside down," Arora said. "She’s traumatized. She’s struggling in school, and that stability and sense of safety that every child should have is being shattered.

Nassau officials held more than 2,600 immigrants at the Nassau County Correctional Center in East Meadow last year on behalf of ICE, county data obtained by Newsday shows.

Many Americans have been outraged by the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement tactics in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland and Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens were fatally shot by federal immigration agents. In Nassau, those fears were further fueled when a 42-year-old immigrant died in September in Nassau’s jail. ICE officials blamed the man’s death on liver failure, a claim his family disputed.

Brewington said immigration officers had committed "atrocities" not only in Minnesota and California, but also in Hauppauge and Hempstead. Leaders in Suffolk and Nassau should tell ICE it has "no place in our communities," he said.

"They need to stop the terror, because what they are doing is ripping families apart in a way that is just inhuman," Brewington said.

Arora is also a member of the Port Washington Rapid Response Network, which monitors ICE and issues alerts to immigrants. She said members of the network were documenting ICE vehicles, license plate numbers and the names of its agents. They could face future criminal prosecution, she said, if they engage in illegal or unconstitutional activity.

"History shows us that when abuses are recorded and remembered, justice follows," she said. "We are watching and we are demanding action."