The NYS Legislature and the Governor have reached an agreement on legislation limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agencies as part of the 2026-2027 FY budget negotiations. The NYS Assembly and Senate passed the legislation on 21 May 2026 with Governor Hochul expected to sign the legislation soon. The new legislation prohibits cooperative agreements between local law enforcement agencies and ICE. These are known as 287(g) MOAs. There are several local police departments that have signed these MOAs and as Table 1 illustrates, the number of 287 (g) MOAs in NYS have accelerated dramatically in the first year of Trump 2.0.
Table 1: 287(g) MOAs in New York State (as of May 2026)[1]
| County | Warrant service officer | Task force model | Jail enforcement model |
| Allegany Village Police Department | 1/7/2026 | ||
| Broome County Sheriff’s Office | 3/10/2025 | ||
| Camden Police Department | 7/2/2025 | ||
| Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Office | 11/19/2025 | ||
| Madison County Sheriff’s Office | 3/19/2016 | ||
| Mohawk Village Police Department | 3/19/2025 | ||
| Nassau County Police Department | 3/10/2025 | ||
| Nassau County Sheriff’s Office | 2/28/2025 | ||
| Niagara County Sheriff’s Office | 5/7/2025 | 5/8/2025 | |
| Otsego County Sheriff’s Office | 10/17/2025 | ||
| Renssalaer County Sheriff’s Office | 6/10/2020 | ||
| Steuben County Sheriff’s Office | 7/29/2025 | 7/23/2025 |
Source: Delegation of Immigration Authority Section 287(g) Immigration and Nationality Act
Previously, cooperation with federal agencies had been a decision made by local law enforcement with the state involving itself mainly at the executive level through EO No. 170. With passage of this legislation, NYS now joins several other blue states that prohibit local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) and Customs ad Border Protection (CPB) officers.
Background to the Fight in NYS over 286(g)s: Balancing Progressives and Moderates
While progressives have long championed the New York for All Act, which proposed banning state and local officers from enforcing federal immigration laws and prohibiting ICE and CPB from entering non-public areas of state and local property without a judicial warrant, New York’s governors resisted a legislative solution. Instead, Governor Cuomo signed EO No. 170 (September 2017), restricting state employees (including the state police) from disclosing information to federal immigration authorities for civil immigration enforcement purposes and prohibiting them from inquiring about individuals’ immigrant status unless required by law or necessary for benefit eligibility. When Governor Hochul renewed Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul continued to stake out an intermediate position with respect to 287 (g) MOAs for several reasons. First, Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential upset, the close margin of Hochul’s 2022 gubernatorial race, and the 2022 midterms, demonstrated the voters’ appetite for tougher immigration enforcement. The close margin of Hochul’s 2022 election solidified Democratic concern. Second, NYS Democratic Party leaders struggle to balance the moderate and progressive wings of their party. Third, Albany is particularly deferential to home rule, especially when it is politically expedient. Governors have cited home rule as the reason that Albany does not interfere with local sanctuary policies but also permits local law enforcement agencies to sign 287 (g) MOAs. Nevertheless, the NYS Democratic leaders’ ability to straddle their party’s liberal and conservative divide was upended in early 2026 by aggressive federal anti–immigration enforcement in Minneapolis. After public outcry over the killing of two American citizens by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Hochul introduced the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which proposed a prohibition of 287 (g) MOAs. Thus, a crisis of the federal government’s making forced state Democratic leaders to abandon their previous position and follow the path of uncooperative federalism forged by other blue states during the first Trump administration.
NYS Says Immigration Enforcement is a Federal Responsibility
The foundation of immigration law is the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 aka the McCarran-Walter Act, which has been amended several times. Enforcement has been particularly emphasized with passage of the Immigration Reform Act of 1986 (IRCA) (combined the first large-scale amnesty program in the US, coupled with expanded border enforcement), Immigration Act of 1980, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA), the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, Homeland Security Act of 2002, and the REAL ID Act of 2005. Congress established criminal sanctions for “certain criminal conduct that undermines immigration rules” (CRS Report and Immigration Offenses). The IRCA and theIIRAIRA accelerated the criminalization of immigration, with the IIRAIRA marking a shift to strict enforcement. There are three specific categories of immigration-related criminal offenses:
- Improper Entry & Illegal Reentry (especially after previous deportation)
- Bringing in, Harboring, Transporting, or Inducing/Encouraging Aliens to Come to the US
- Immigration-Related Fraud- this third category covers several areas: visa fraud & false statements; marriage fraud; false claim of US citizenship; passport fraud; procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully
- Other Offenses in Federal Statutes – such as high-speed flight from an immigration checkpoint; importation, holding, or keeping of an alien for prostitution or “any other immoral purpose”; failure to depart after a final order of removal; willful failure by an alien to apply for registration and be fingerprinted; failure to notify of a change of address.
Importantly, many common violations of immigration law are civil in nature such as overstaying a visa (accounts for 45% of unauthorized migrants in the US), unauthorized employment, violation of nonimmigrant status (e.g. a tourist working while on a B-1 or B-2 visa), failure to depart after a removal order, failure to register change of address, document violations (e.g. failing to carry registration documents), public charge violations, misrepresentation or fraud in immigration applications (see above for fraud that can trigger a criminal charge), employer paperwork violations (e.g. hiring unauthorized workers, failure to retain I-9 records), unlawful presence accrual, SEVIS/student reporting violations (international students failing to maintain required reporting or enrollment obligations). (Sometimes actions can be both criminal and civil violation of the INA.)
What Congress had not fully grappled with was the lack of federal law enforcement personnel and the difficulty the federal government would have in gaining cooperation in many of the states. ICE has access to about 20,000 federal employees and contractors for enforcement actions in the US interior, 22,000 US Border Patrol officers, and 33,00 Customs and Border Protection officers at the nations’ 328 official ports of entry compared to the approximate 788,000 state and local government sworn officers. As cooperation with federal authorities became more problematic for a variety of reasons (including personnel costs, lawsuits against states and municipalities and concerns over migrant communities being unwilling to cooperate with local police who could then turn them over to federal immigration enforcement officers), communities, beginning with NYC, prohibited local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE. But it is not just an issue of costs and public safety. The standoff involves states’ rights and anticommandeering principles (the latter SCOTUS rulings barring the federal government from commandeering state and local employees without their consent).
Section 133 of the IIRAIRA established the 287(g) program to overcome the personnel shortage problem. Section 287(g) “deputizes” local and state law officers to carry out immigration work by negotiating memorandums of agreement (MOAs) with local and state law enforcement agencies. These 287(g) MOAs are voluntary. Figure 1 maps the extent of 287(g) participation.
Figure 1: 287(g) Participating Agencies
Source: https://www.ice.gov/identify-and-arrest/287g
Figure 1 illustrates the absence of 287(g) MOAs in several states. That is because during the first Trump Administration, several blue states began adopting legislation prohibiting local law enforcement agencies from participating in such agreements: California (2017), Connecticut (2019), Delaware (2025), Illinois (2019), New Jersey (2019), Oregon (2019), and Washington (2019). New York stood out as a blue state exception, but ICE actions around the country, including in NYS, established the environment for moderate Democrats to join the progressive wing of the party to override the ability of local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE.
What the New Law Does
1. Prohibits 287(g) MOAs.
2. Allows private places (deemed “sensitive”) to deny access to ICE.
3. Prohibits all law enforcement officers from wearing masks except for safety needs.
4. Prohibits state and local governments from dedicating resources to immigration enforcement (such as providing traffic control for ICE while engaging in raids).
5. Establishes an Office of Immigrant Trust, which will be located in the Office of the NYS Attorney General.
6. New Yorkers can sue federal immigration authorities over civil rights violations.
Did New York For All Advocates Get Everything They Wanted?
No. The new law allows local police to share information with immigration authorities, while banning municipal and state employees from doing so. The New York For All legislation had proposed banning police cooperation except when federal immigration officers presented judicial warrants. It also does not ban local law enforcement from working informally with ICE. This is an important loss for them because much of the cooperation between local police and ICE is informal.
[1] Jail Enforcement Model: permits local police officers to identify and process removable aliens in jail or detention facility who have pending or active criminal charges while they are in police custody. Task Force Model: allows officers to enforce limited immigration authority while performing routine police duties, such as identifying and alien at a DUI checkpoint and sharing information directly with ICE. Warrant Service Officer program: ICE trains, certifies, and authorizes officers to serve and executive administrative warrants on aliens currently in the agency’s custody. See https://www.ice.gov/identify-and-arrest/287g.
For more about this topic, see Essay: New York State’s Migration Crisis and Governing New Yok State Through Crises, Chapter 13.
Governing New York State Through Crises 
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