New York's deadline for local police departments to sever so-called 287(g) partnerships with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrived Tuesday, and by nightfall only one Long Island jurisdiction remained genuinely unresolved: Nassau County. Some early accounts had pointed instead to sheriffs in Madison and Steuben counties as Long Island's holdouts. Neither claim survives a map check: Madison sits in central New York near Syracuse, and Steuben is in the Southern Tier near the Pennsylvania border — both roughly 200 miles from the nearest Long Island beach. Both sheriffs also confirmed to local reporters that they'd shut down their ICE agreements before the deadline, even while objecting loudly to being told to. The real fight over Long Island's ICE ties is unfolding in Nassau, and it's now tangled up with a governor's race, a federal court ruling, and two upstate counties suing to keep their own partnerships alive.
A Law, a Dozen Agencies, One Deadline
New York's Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on May 27, bars local departments from entering or renewing 287(g) agreements and required any still active to be wound down by Aug. 25. The statute's language goes further than a simple request — it declares existing agreements void automatically as of that date, regardless of whether an agency formally cancels the paperwork. The state's newly created Office of Immigrant Trust sent letters to a dozen agencies with active partnerships in late July and asked for compliance documentation by Aug. 14.
Not every account agrees on how many agencies that dozen actually represents. State officials, including the attorney general's office, consistently cite 12 agencies. But WSHU, citing the state's own count, put the figure at 13 jurisdictions holding 287(g) paperwork when Hochul signed the bill in May. That gap hasn't been publicly reconciled; this piece uses the more consistently repeated official figure of 12.
By Tuesday Night, Down to Three Agencies in Two Counties
As the deadline hit, the attorney general's office told PIX11 it had issued subpoenas to five agencies across four counties whose paperwork was missing or judged insufficient: the sheriffs of Broome, Steuben, Nassau and Rensselaer, plus the Nassau County Police Department separately. That subpoena list is broader than the list of agencies actually still defying the law, though. By Tuesday evening, Hochul's office confirmed that only three agencies in two counties — Nassau's police department, Nassau's sheriff's office, and the Rensselaer County Sheriff's Office — had failed to signal compliance. Broome and Steuben, despite their subpoenas, had already moved to end their agreements days ahead of the deadline.
Nassau Weighs Its Options
Nassau's police force and sheriff have run a 287(g) partnership since early 2025, cross-designating 10 detectives as immigration officers and setting aside cell space at the county jail in East Meadow for ICE to hold detainees. County Executive Bruce Blakeman — also challenging Hochul for governor this November — hasn't said whether Nassau will comply, and his spokesperson declined to comment when the subpoena arrived. At a recent campaign stop, Blakeman defended the arrangement bluntly, saying of immigrants removed under the partnership, "We removed them from America, and we made safer communities by doing so."
Hochul has answered just as pointedly. "They will face legal action," she said of any department still holding an ICE agreement. Whatever the political theater, Nassau's partnership remains active for now — nothing in the state law shuts it down automatically the way a court order would.
Rensselaer and Broome Go to Court — But Not for the Same Reason
The clearest open defiance isn't happening on Long Island at all. Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin has said flatly he won't comply, telling a local TV reporter, "I'll see you in court, governor." His sheriff, Kyle Bourgault, said in a statement that he'd submitted a sworn affidavit backing a federal suit against the law and expects the county to prevail once, in his words, the politics get set aside. That suit, according to reporting Tuesday, was being filed the same day in the Northern District of New York.
Broome County's position is easy to mistake for the same thing, but it isn't. Sheriff Fred Akshar's office formally notified ICE's Buffalo field office on Aug. 20 — five days ahead of the deadline — that it was ending its 287(g) agreement, making Broome compliant on paper. At the same time, Akshar said he intends to join other sheriffs in fighting the law in court, and the attorney general's office confirmed Broome, like Rensselaer, plans to sue over the statute's validity even after shutting down its own agreement. Broome complied and is suing anyway — a different posture than simply having incomplete paperwork.
Nassau's own legal path is still unsettled. County officials have expressed interest in joining Rensselaer and Broome's litigation but hadn't committed to it as of Tuesday.
A Federal Judge Already Weighed In — And New York Won This Round
The law hasn't gone unchallenged in federal court, but the outcome so far cuts against the counties resisting it. The U.S. Department of Justice sued New York in June over two provisions of Hochul's broader immigrant-protection package: a ban on ICE agents wearing masks, and the 287(g) prohibition itself. In a ruling handed down in early August, U.S. District Judge Mae D'Agostino blocked the mask-covering ban, finding it likely unconstitutional under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. But she denied the federal government's request to halt the 287(g) ban, letting that piece of the law take effect as scheduled. Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James called the split ruling a win for the state, saying local departments should be focused on local public safety rather than federal civil immigration work. Whether that early finding survives a full trial — the same trial Rensselaer and Broome are now trying to join from the opposite side — remains to be seen.
What It Looks Like in Nassau's Latino Communities
The practical stakes of Nassau's holdout land hardest in the county's heavily Latino villages. Census figures cited by the Long Island Advocate put Hempstead's population at 51% Hispanic or Latino and Westbury's at 32%, and both villages have logged the county's highest tallies of reported ICE sightings since the partnership began. Melanie Creps, who directs the Central American Refugee Center in Hempstead, has said the agreement leaves residents afraid of local police, not just of federal agents. Marc Soto, who leads the Brentwood-based nonprofit Liga de Justicia, has said fewer clients are coming through his office's doors than before the partnership started; he described the toll it's taken on his work, but said the fear he sees in his community keeps the "fire within me and beneath me to try and help in some small way."
Santos Reyes, a Honduran construction worker and father of two, died in the Nassau County jail last September, less than a day after ICE detained him — a case advocates still raise at rallies against the partnership. Nassau officials point to their own numbers in response: a Newsday analysis cited by WSHU found that of immigrants detained at the Nassau jail between February 2025 and March 2026, 147 had prior convictions for violent crimes — under 5% of everyone detained there in that span.
Correcting the Record on Madison and Steuben
Neither county named in the original brief behaved the way it was described. Steuben Sheriff Jim Allard told a local station, "we've complied with the law as we've always maintained that we would," confirming his office had ended its ICE agreement — while noting the county stands to lose roughly $130,000 already received and another $40,000 per quarter in future federal reimbursement it's now ineligible for. He also said Steuben could still join a lawsuit challenging the underlying law, even with its own agreement gone. Madison County's Todd Hood — now running for lieutenant governor on Blakeman's ticket — likewise told the state his office would comply, despite once warning the ban would leave "everyone less safe." Neither county touches the Long Island Sound, the LIRR, or anything resembling Nassau's political fight.
What Happens Next
The Office of Immigrant Trust can subpoena records, interview witnesses and bring civil enforcement actions against agencies that ignore the law — authority it has now begun using against Nassau, Rensselaer, Broome and Steuben. Two separate court fights are underway over the same eleven-week-old statute: the federal government's challenge, which already lost its first round on the 287(g) question specifically, and a fresh lawsuit that Rensselaer and Broome are pursuing from the opposite direction, aiming to void the law altogether. Nassau's next move — comply, join the counties suing, or keep operating and dare the state to act — should become clearer in the coming weeks, and will likely say more about how much force New York's new law actually carries than anything that happened Tuesday.
