ALBANY – Gov. Kathy Hochul took a direct hit at her GOP election opponent Bruce Blakeman Friday as she unveiled new anti-ICE proposals, including one to end existing agreements between local and federal law enforcement.
Hochul also bizarrely announced that she would propose adding homes to the list of “sensitive locations” — like schools and houses of worship — that she wants to bar US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from, though it’s already illegal for authorities to enter private property without a warrant.
“We are called to act in this moment of tyranny,” Hochul said during a Manhattan press conference, flanked by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and several district attorneys from across the state.
Heeding rallying cries from the left to resist President Trump’s immigration crackdown, Hochul, who is up for re-election this year, made her most forceful call yet to push back against ICE — while aiming squarely at Nassau County, whose executive, Blakeman, is running against her.
The Democratic governor said she wants to stop local governments from signing agreements allowing ICE to use their personnel and facilities for enforcement actions and to house detainees.
Five counties across the state, including Nassau, have such agreements currently.
“Governor Hochul is the most pro-criminal governor in the United States who has a callous disregard for the safety of our communities and victims of crime,” Blakeman told The Post in a statement after her announcement.
“When I am governor I will veto that legislation,” he said.
Hochul denied the move had anything to do with her re-election bid.
“It has nothing to do with who’s running for office. This is the right thing to do in this moment,” she said.
Prior to the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Hochul announced proposals that would allow New Yorkers to sue ICE agents and also to prevent them from accessing “sensitive locations” including hospitals, schools and houses of worship.
She took it several steps further Friday, proposing adding peoples’ homes to that list of “sensitive locations.”
“This is about a rogue federal agency that’s going to unleashed (sic) on American streets for the sole purpose of creating chaos, carnage and fear,” she said — calling federal agents “poorly trained paramilitary forces.”
Hochul confusingly claimed that her proposals would both put guardrails on ICE — and also not prevent authorities from going after migrants accused of committing crimes.
“Cutting off access to our jails to ICE agents will make it harder for them to operate these large scale operations, which they’re building up to try and do right now in the state of New York,” she said, suggesting the feds were trying to lay the groundwork for a Minneapolis-scale crackdown in the Empire State.
Nassau’s agreement with the feds is amongst the most expansive in the state, allowing a task force of local deputies to enforce federal immigration laws.
“We dedicate 50 jail cells to ICE. We have ten dedicated detectives from our police department working together with ICE,” Blakeman told reporters earlier this month touting the agreement.
He said at the time that enforcement operations led to the arrests of 46 migrants accused of crimes, including 27 involved with gang activity.
Blakeman also said he would stop ICE from going into schools, and day care centers, though asserted that wasn’t happening in Nassau County.
“I wouldn’t let anybody raid a house of worship, a daycare center. That’s ridiculous. Kathy Hochul talks about that, but it just doesn’t exist,” he said.
Lawmakers have been putting pressure on Hochul to take up additional protections for immigrants, largely around the proposed “New York for All Act.”
The bill would prevent local governments from signing agreements with ICE, too, but also would prohibit municipalities from communicating altogether with federal immigration authorities, making New York officially a sanctuary state under law.
State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) embraced New York for All earlier this month. She wants to pass some sort of immigration legislation before lawmakers get mired in state budget negotiations in March and April.
“These sound like meaningful steps forward,” she wrote in a statement reacting to Hochul’s announcement.
State Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Brooklyn), a sponsor of the New York for All bill, and others are still demanding the full sanctuary state policy.
“This is a good step. Police should focus on fighting crime, not serving as deputized lackeys for ICE. But we must do more,” Goundardes wrote in a post on X Friday.
The bill is expected to be formally introduced next week.
Despite Hochul saying during her announcement that she’d like to spend more time focused on other issues like “affordability” and expanding access to healthcare, she plans to kick roughly 700,000 green card holders and other immigrants off the state’s essential health plan and onto Medicaid.
