Times Union13%
Judge pauses NY's mask ban, but law banning ICE agreements remains intact 13%
By Brendan J. Lyons13%
8/4/2026, 6:52:03 AM
Keywords: Latestnews, State Politics
BS Summary: This article contains 14 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Negativity Bias, and Confirmation Bias, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 10.9% saturation with 141 hits. Analysis detected 892 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,288 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 23.1% and a BS Rank of 13% (24,787 of 28,359 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 87.40% of the article peer group.
ALBANY — A federal judge has declined the Justice Department’s request for a temporary injunction to block a new state law that bans congressionally authorized agreements governing civil immigration enforcement coordination between local, state and federal agencies.
The law is intended to prevent local government entities and police or correctional agencies from entering into formal agreements with the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Those agreements allow the local agencies to operate as immigration officers or to detain someone who is being held solely for civil immigration violations.
But the decision by U.S.
District Judge Mae A.
D’Agostino also handed the Justice Department a victory: she issued a temporary injunction blocking the state from enforcing another law that went into effect this year that prohibits any law enforcement officers — local, state or federal — from concealing their identity with masks while interacting with the public and requiring them to display clear identification.
The law was intended to specifically target federal ICE agents.
In the latter case, D’Agostino, citing a 9th Circuit U.S.
Court of Appeals decision upholding a challenge of a similar law in California, noted that New York’s statute that seeks to regulate the actions of federal law enforcement officers is a constitutional overreach and the Justice Department is likely to prevail on the merits of its core arguments.
“Because the Face Covering and Identification Acts take direct aim at regulating the federal agents in their function of enforcing federal law, the court finds these provisions likely run afoul of the intergovernmental immunity doctrine,” D’Agostino wrote in a 51-page decision.
The law that bans what are known as 287(g) agreements between U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and 12 New York police agencies allows local officers to be deputized to help with detaining migrants targeted for deportation, including making arrests and holding them in county jails, in exchange for federal funding.
New York’s law does not ban those agencies from assisting with immigration enforcement and stipulates that it only applies to “civil” immigration proceedings.
D’Agostino concluded that the law prohibiting those agreements — which are supposed to be voided by Aug. 25 — does not impede federal immigration enforcement activities.
She said the Termination Act “seeks only to control whether New York and its localities voluntarily engage in certain cooperation with federal authorities.
The United States has also failed to show, at this stage, that the Termination Act likely discriminates against the federal government.”
Gov.
Kathy Hochul, in a memorandum in support of the legislation, asserted that “the use of local law enforcement officers and assets for the enforcement of federal civil immigration violations … draws critical public safety resources away from essential law enforcement functions that keep New York’s residents and communities safe.”
Last month, New York filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald J.
Trump’s administration in anticipation of a feared showdown with White House Border Czar Thomas Homan over the new state statutes, which are intended to prevent or sharply limit the ability of state and local police agencies to assist with federal immigration enforcement.
The U.S.
Department of Justice filed its own lawsuit in federal court around the same time, challenging the constitutionality of the statutes.
D’Agostino issued her ruling in the case filed by the Justice Department.
Barring an appeal, the decision will pause New York’s mask ban but keep in place the new law requiring local police agencies to end their contracts with ICE.
It's unclear what civil penalties any agencies that defy the law will face.
The federal statute that authorizes the agreements — Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act — was added to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which was adopted during the administration of President Bill Clinton.
The federal legislation was amended in 2002 to authorize the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security — which was created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks — to enter into written agreements with state and local agencies “so that qualified personnel can perform certain functions of an immigration officer.”
Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin and Rensselaer County Sheriff Kyle Bourgault have said they will not comply with the law and intend to file a lawsuit challenging the measure.
The new state laws will not prevent local or state law enforcement agencies from assisting federal immigration agencies with the apprehension or detention of someone who has been accused of committing a crime.
The new laws also allow those agencies to apprehend or detain someone facing a civil immigration violation if a warrant for their arrest has been issued by a judge — which many agencies are interpreting as including a federal immigration judge.
In addition, while Hochul has for years suggested that state and local law enforcement agencies could still assist federal agencies in matters involving “serious crimes,” the new state statutes — and policies already implemented by State Police — do not define a “serious” crime.
The governor has also said repeatedly that crossing a U.S. border without authorization is “a civil violation” and “not a crime,” but that is misleading.
While it’s true that crossing the U.S. border for the first time by evading a checkpoint is a civil violation, it is also a misdemeanor crime under federal law and has been routinely prosecuted by the Justice Department.
And reentering the U.S. without authorization after being deported is a felony under federal law.
The Times Union reported last year that State Police frequently assist federal immigration authorities and contact them during investigations in which they encounter people suspected of entering the U.S. illegally.
In the wake of the new laws recently enacted in New York that officials contend will limit the ability of state and local agencies to assist with federal immigration enforcement, State Police have not issued any new directives changing their policies.
The last directive was issued in November, when Deputy Superintendent Darrin S.
Pitkin issued a memorandum to all State Police employees instructing that no one may “make referrals to federal authorities in cases where they develop information of suspected civil immigration violations unless there is reason to suspect a violation of a criminal law.”
Early last year, the state attorney general’s office updated its immigration “guidance,” which was first issued in 2017 during Trump’s first term, asserting that law enforcement officers in New York “are not ordinarily permitted to detain people at the request of federal civil immigration authorities alone without a judicial warrant.”
But that guidance conflicts with the policies that have been outlined by Hochul and implemented by State Police, which enable police to assist immigration authorities in cases involving a crime, including an immigration crime, which could involve someone entering or reentering the U.S. illegally, even if they have not been charged with any other crime.
The New York State Sheriffs' Association also recently issued guidance to its members noting that the restrictions under New York’s new laws ban “most state and municipal employees from using public resources, on-duty time, or facilities for immigration enforcement but the ban does not apply to local correctional facilities, nor to local police officers (e.g., sheriffs and deputies), peace officers (or correction officers) … nor their civilian staff.”
In a joint statement issued Monday following D’Agostino’s ruling, Hochul and state Attorney General Letitia James said, “local law enforcement should be focused on local matters, and New York taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for any collaboration with ICE.”
Their statement added: “While the court enjoined enforcement of New York’s mask ban, we stand firm in our belief that masked agents do not make New York safer and our offices are reviewing all legal options at this time.”
Speakers
5speakers27%attributed speech937writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageHochul and Letitia James
81 attributed words23% of attributed speech50% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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