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New York leaders announced new immigration enforcement restrictions Thursday as part of a tentative state budget agreement, advancing what would become some of the strongest limits in the country on cooperation between local authorities and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The measures, unveiled by Gov. Kathy Hochul, more than a month after the April 1 budget deadline, would prohibit formal cooperation agreements between local law enforcement and ICE, restrict immigration enforcement activity at schools and hospitals and bar officers from wearing masks while on duty.
Under the agreement, state and local police agencies would be barred from contacting federal immigration authorities during noncriminal encounters such as routine traffic stops. The package would also ban formal 287(g) agreements, which deputize local officers to assist in federal immigration enforcement operations.
County jails would no longer be allowed to rent detention space to ICE, and immigration agents would be prohibited from entering homes, schools, churches, hospitals and other designated “sanctuary” locations without a judicial warrant.
The agreement would further create a state-level right allowing individuals or families to sue federal, state or local officials — including ICE agents — for alleged constitutional violations.
Hochul described the measures as a “guardrail against ICE overreach,” arguing that the Trump administration had increasingly targeted workers, students and families while relying on intimidation tactics during enforcement operations.
The immigration package drew immediate backlash from Trump border czar Tom Homan, who last week threatened to “flood the zone” with ICE agents if New York approved additional restrictions on cooperation with federal authorities.
Hochul dismissed the comments as an attempt at intimidation.
“I don’t take well to threats,” she said in a press conference. “They’re going to find that out.”
The state-level debate has unfolded alongside mounting scrutiny of how New York City police interact with federal immigration agents during enforcement operations.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing increasing pressure from progressive allies after NYPD officers clashed with protesters outside Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn during an ICE arrest last week. Videos of the confrontation circulated widely online, prompting accusations from elected officials that the NYPD coordinated with ICE agents in violation of the city’s sanctuary laws.
Mamdani denied that allegation, saying officers were conducting crowd control during a chaotic protest rather than assisting federal agents.
But several prominent Democrats who backed Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral campaign publicly challenged that account in a letter to the Mayor, according to reporting by Politico. Rep. Nydia Velázquez, Brooklyn Borough president Antonio Reynoso, state Senator Julia Salazar and several city lawmakers wrote that they believed NYPD officers had coordinated with ICE agents during the hospital incident.
The group called on Mamdani to issue stricter and clearer rules governing how NYPD officers interact with federal immigration agents, including explicit standards outlining when officers should “disengage” or “refuse assistance” during civil immigration operations.
“Officers arriving at a scene where federal agents are already operating cannot be left to improvise,” the lawmakers wrote. “The absence of such a standard, or the failure to enforce one, is how we ended up with NYPD officers visibly working alongside ICE outside a hospital.”
While Hochul’s measures represent a victory for many immigrant advocates, other progressive lawmakers say the final state agreement stopped short of completely severing communication between local police and ICE.
New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assembly Member Karines Reyes sponsored the New York for All Act, which they say adds more comprehensive restrictions between local authorities and ICE.
“Letting law enforcement hand New Yorkers over to ICE merely because they suspect unsubstantiated ‘probable cause’ means putting countless people at risk of deportation for crimes they didn’t commit,” they wrote.
“This false normalization – probable cause without due process – will continue to endanger immigrants and people who ‘look like’ immigrants alike. It’s an abandonment of the democratic values we’ve fought so hard to protect.”
Hochul maintained throughout negotiations that local law enforcement should still be able to cooperate with federal authorities in criminal investigations involving serious offenses.
“We’ll help you go after the hardened criminals, the violent, the worst of the worst,” Hochul said Thursday. “But, my God, it has gone too far.”
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