{"id":275563,"date":"2026-06-23T18:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T18:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/275563\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T18:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T18:59:09","slug":"new-york-state-and-trump-justice-department-file-dueling-suits-over-new-laws-banning-local-police-from-working-with-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/275563\/","title":{"rendered":"New York state and Trump Justice Department file dueling suits over new laws banning local police from working with ICE"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York filed suit<\/a> in an upstate federal court Monday to defend new state laws passed to protect New Yorkers from federal immigration enforcement, saying it wanted to get ahead of the Trump administration\u2019s expected attempts to claim the laws are unconstitutional and strike them down in court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t quite accomplish that aim: Trump\u2019s Department of Justice also filed a suit<\/a> attacking those same laws that hit the docket a few minutes before the state\u2019s did in a different upstate federal court \u2014 arguing, as New York officials said they expected, that the state\u2019s laws violated provisions in the U.S. Constitution that prevent state governments from \u201cregulating\u201d federal government actions.<\/p>\n

Arguably the most notable piece of legislation raised in the dueling suits is the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act<\/a>, which is set to go into effect in New York this week. It prohibits local police, such as the NYPD, from working with ICE agents to carry out federal immigration enforcement and bars police from detaining people solely for federal civil immigration violations, something that\u2019s been a major issue in the state over the past year.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s and the feds\u2019 suits also respectively defend and attack new laws that prohibit the use of public subsidies for civil immigration detention facilities, hold the federal government can\u2019t contract local facilities for immigration enforcement, ban local, state and federal law enforcement officers from concealing their identity with masks while interacting with the public and require all officers to display clear identification when on the job.<\/p>\n

New York: Anti-ICE laws are within \u2018every right\u2019<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s legislation is clearly constitutional, the state\u2019s suit says, as the state has a right to determine how its law enforcement resources should be used (ie, not for ICE enforcement action, yes for responding to local gun violence) and pass laws it feels are necessary for the public safety of its population.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe State of New York has every right as a sovereign state to require law enforcement officers acting within the State\u2019s jurisdiction to be identifiable, and to choose not to use the state\u2019s limited law enforcement resources to assist in federal immigration enforcement,\u201d says New York\u2019s suit, filed by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James in the Northern District of New York.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also allowed to pass these laws, New York says, because the 10th Amendment effectively says that the federal government may not encroach on a state\u2019s \u201cpolice power,\u201d to prescribe regulations to promote the \u201cgood order\u201d of its people, and passing laws to secure and ensure public safety within a state\u2019s borders has long been understood as within the province of state sovereignty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s DOJ sharply disagrees, arguing in its suit that the legislation unconstitutionally regulates federal government action by saying what ICE agents can and can\u2019t do in the state and preventing the federal government from entering into agreements with local police and local jails to carry out its immigration enforcement agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal government, not the State of New York, has the authority to control its own agents and activities,\u201d says the feds\u2019 suit, filed in the Western District of New York. \u201cNew York\u2019s Act seeks to regulate the actions of federal law enforcement officers within New York by subjecting those federal officers to criminal penalties for following the federal laws and policies that govern their federal duties and actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s DOJ also accuses New York\u2019s laws of \u201cstanding as an obstacle to the accomplishment of a federal objective\u201d and conflicting with federal law, which New York denies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Essentially, the state says, federal officials are free to carry out their immigration agenda themselves \u2013 New York just isn\u2019t going to help them do it because it\u2019s not in the state\u2019s interests to do so, and ICE can\u2019t deploy state or city police to further their agenda. And, New York law won\u2019t prevent federal agents from doing their work; it will just prevent them from wearing masks, so if anything goes wrong, the officer responsible can be held accountable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The federal DOJ is looking for the laws to be struck down, while the state officials suing say they\u2019re seeking a declaration from a federal court that the laws can stand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is unclear how the two dueling suits in separate courts will play out. The governments said they were uncertain whether they would be consolidated into a single case or litigated side by side. If both cases were allowed to play out, it\u2019s also unclear what would happen if each court came to a different conclusion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has levied public threats against the state over the impending laws. Tom Homan, who\u2019s been designated as a border czar within the Department of Homeland Security, promised to send a \u201csurge\u201d of ICE officers<\/a> into New York if the state enacted the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act.<\/p>\n

Statewide elected officials, immigrant advocacy, and legal organizations have supported the challenged state laws, saying they\u2019re necessary to keep immigrant communities in the state safe and prevent federal officers from committing \u201cviolent acts\u201d while wearing masks.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy hiding their faces and refusing to wear identification, federal immigration officers endanger New Yorkers and intentionally evade accountability,\u201d James said in a statement. \u201cOur communities should not have to live in fear of being disappeared by unidentified masked agents. If the federal government wants to brazenly defy our laws, then we will fight tooth and nail in court to ensure transparency and keep all New Yorkers safe.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York filed suit in an upstate federal court Monday to defend new state laws passed to protect…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27994,2035,2301,106004,2710,9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-275563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-ag-letitia-james","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-kathy-hocul","tag-law","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}