In a one-on-one interview with Spectrum News 1, Nassau County Executive and Republican candidate for governor Bruce Blakeman doubled down on his county’s relationship with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and his approach to the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown.
“I feel that the goal of both ICE and our local law enforcement is to get as many criminals off the streets as possible, and we’ve done that, and we’ve demonstrated that we have a model that works very well, and the community supports our agreement with ICE, otherwise I wouldn’t have won reelection in a landslide.”
Earlier in the day at the Conservative Party’s annual conference, he blasted Gov. Kathy Hochul’s executive budget proposal, which would terminate local law enforcement agreements with ICE, known as the 287(g) program, insisting that the proposal is a threat to public safety.
“She is the most pro-criminal governor in the United States of America,” he said, pointing to the state’s previous criminal justice reforms. “This governor is not about keeping our communities safe, she’s not serious about backing law enforcement, and she’s using ICE as an excuse to attack law enforcement.”
Monday, Hochul framed her budget proposal as just the opposite in an interview with MS NOW’s Morning Joe.
“I want to be very clear— we are not saying that local police cannot cooperate when there’s a criminal investigation. This is what the Republicans are going to challenge and conflate. We have always done that, always will — we want to protect our communities,” later adding, “You’re not using our local police— I need them to protect our local communities.”
When asked by Spectrum News 1 if he would be willing to sue the state or flat out refuse to comply with the law in his capacity as county executive if it is passed as part of the state budget, Blakeman didn’t rule it out.
“We will take all means necessary in the judicial system to make sure that we have the right to protect our communities,” he said.
Hochul addressed that possibility at a news conference when the proposal was unveiled on Friday.
“Every municipality is required to follow the law,” she said. “The consequences of breaking the law in the state of New York is the attorney general will bring action, and it’ll be taken to court for enforcement.”
Hochul has said the local agreements distract officers from addressing crime within the community and sow distrust.
“I want my police going after the murderers, the rapists, the gun traffickers and being available for emergencies. And if they’re off, they’re being deputized by ICE under these agreements that just a few of our counties are doing, they’re being distracted and I do not want that,” she said Monday.
Blakeman disagreed that the 287(g) program would in any way hinder the ability of local law enforcement to carry out those other duties.
“We have an outstanding relationship with all of our federal, state and local law enforcement partners,” he said. “My police officers are some of the best trained, the best equipped police officers in the United States, and they can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said. “We have an excellent relationship with ICE, and they respect us, and they respect our boundaries.”
Hochul is also proposing to prevent ICE from entering certain sensitive locations without a judicial warrant, including schools, places of worship, and hospitals.
Blakeman claimed that his county’s cooperative relationship with ICE prevents those locations from becoming problematic.
“They respect us, and they respect our boundaries,” he said.
When asked if he had spoken to President Trump about a potential scaling up of ICE operations in New York, Blakeman said he speaks with the president “frequently” but wouldn’t disclose details.
Blakeman was in Albany to talk about affordability at the Conservative Party’s annual conference. His remarks centered around energy prices and railing against the state’s 2019 climate law and resulting electrification goals and mandates.
“What we need is an energy policy that makes sense,” he told reporters.
If elected, immigration would be one of many tough issues he would be forced to navigate as a Republican governor in a largely blue state, and Blakeman has said he would like to see mandates in the climate law rolled back and a pause in the state’s electrification process.
As governor, he would drive the legislative agenda, but would be only one of the “three people in a room” who negotiate the state budget — the others being Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who answer to legislative majorities with limited appetite for major climate policy rollbacks.
“I think it’s a negotiation process that we have to sit at the table and talk about priorities, and when we talk about affordability — this is an area that we can remedy very quickly. Provide cheap energy to the state of New York.”
Hochul herself is facing questions over the state’s climate goals, with Politico first reporting that the Governor was in active discussions to make changes later in the budget process.
She told the Time’s Union’s Dan Clark on Monday that conversations are happening, but the governor would face the same state legislature full of reluctant Democrats that Blakeman would.
“These are the conversations that I’m having with the legislature. I don’t want to get ahead of it…I cannot have this state go dark.”
In addition to energy mandates and the state’s immigration policy, Blakeman has railed against New York’s criminal justice reforms— including changes made to bail and discovery laws when Democrats took the majority in the state Senate after the 2018 election.
He told Spectrum News 1 he is confident he is capable of negotiating with progressives in the state legislature to achieve some rollbacks.
“Again, it’s a negotiation. I think I have the ability to sit down with people and try to find areas of agreement. There might be a better way to resolve some of the concerns they have without cashless bail for people who have committed crime after crime after crime without any consequences,” he said. “I am very confident that there will be areas where we can find accommodation. There has to be more than one party rule in this state; one-party rule has been a failure.”