Poloncarz: County would only cooperate with ICE with signed judicial arrest warrants

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Just as the highly publicized and controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency effort seemingly cooling off in Minnesota – could a similar situation ever occur in a border area like Erie County?  

2 On Your Side explored that subject Tuesday with County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

On Monday Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan sign an Executive Order to prevent any city department or employee from cooperating with ICE in its immigration enforcement mission unless there is a specific judicial warrant.

RELATED: Republican lawmaker Claudia Tenney speaks on immigration enforcement

2 On Your Side previously reported that in January that Erie County Sheriff’s office and Buffalo Police Department said there could not realistically be coordinated operations with ICE due to a lack of resources and staffing.

But there has been further talk about what might happen if a concentrated ICE effort was ever deployed here

Poloncarz told 2 On Your Side, “We’ve had conversations about that internally in county government. As I said we will always honor a judicial signed arrest warrant.” 

Then he quickly added, “But we’re not gonna sit here and help ICE if they come in our community. We’re gonna do our best to protect our community. I’ve talked to Sheriff Garcia about it and he basically agrees. He understands that we as an agency would not necessarily be assisting ICE in any regards. But it they did come and say hey we have an arrest warrant for an individual in your custody it would be handed over.”

Poloncarz also pointed out, “The one thing I have been told by representatives from law enforcement is we do not have anywhere near the undocumented population of immigrants in Buffalo and Erie County as they do in Minneapolis, Chicago, or Los Angeles. So for them to do a surge here would be counter – productive because there’s not that many peoople here for them to detain even if they wanted to.”