Progress protecting NYers, including students, from ICE

Leonel is a high school senior on Long Island. He likes going out to eat with his friends, spending weekends at the gym, and working to improve his community. In addition to getting ready for college — the honors student will attend Suffolk County Community College — he spent the past year traveling to Albany to push for legislation to protect immigrant New Yorkers from the Trump administration. It’s personal for him, having immigrated from Ecuador a week before his 12th birthday. He recently sat in the room while Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a package that will rein in some of the worst abuses of the federal government.

But not all of them.

The new law will have a massive impact on families across the state. It will especially impact young people like Leonel who have lived with the threat of ICE agents in their schools.

Particularly on Long Island, schools have become hotbeds for immigration enforcement activity. At Brentwood High School, my alma mater, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up on the first day of school, a clear intimidation tactic. At Leonel's high school, agents loiter across the street. There have been reports of teachers across the state threatening to call ICE on their students. Feeling safe in school should not be a privilege.

Our new bill prohibits any school resources officer from questioning, investigating or interrogating someone for civil immigration enforcement. Nobody in the school district can disclose personally identifiable information about an individual or add that information to a database. It also bars any other agency, like Child Protective Services, from sharing information about students or cooperating with ICE. While all of this is now illegal, it never should have been allowed.

We also banned 287(g) agreements, or formal cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman signed one of these deals, essentially deputizing local police as federal immigration agents. That has to go now too.

Here's where things get tricky. The main way that New Yorkers are caught up in the Trump administration's family separation regime is through a more insidious, informal collaboration between police and ICE. Let's say you get pulled over because you have tinted windows. Nothing in state law prohibits the police from picking up the phone and letting federal agents know that they've stopped someone who may be undocumented, then holding them until ICE arrives. This happens all the time, particularly to our Black and brown neighbors. This is what keeps Leonel up at night.

There was a proposal this session that would address informal collaboration, and it was the most pro-immigrant legislation that's been put forward in my 20-plus years in the Assembly. Though the legislature fought hard to include this provision in the final bill, ultimately it was not included in the overall package. But it must be a priority next year.

Nothing is more important than protecting New York's communities. Banning informal collaboration has the support of dozens of legislators, immigrant rights groups, faith leaders, mayors across the state, labor unions, agricultural workers and students like Leonel.

This is about more than protecting one person from deportation — it's about preserving the dignity of entire communities. It's about making sure that when Leonel comes home his mom is there too, cooking the food that reminds him of where he came from. I've stood shoulder to shoulder with immigrant families in their fight for respect and justice. We owe it to them to finish the job.

This guest essay reflects the views of Assemb. Phil Ramos, who represents New York's 6th Assembly District.