ICE at Hempstead Village armory: Why immigration advocates want federal agents banned from the site

In Hempstead Village, local police can be seen coming and going from a two-story brick building known as the armory, a historic military facility. But in recent months, there has sometimes been a more troubling presence, according to immigrant advocates: U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents.

ICE's use of the armory is at the center of a battle between the Hempstead Village mayor and immigrant advocates who said they are outraged ICE agents have used the facility's parking lot as a staging area for enforcement operations.

Advocates are demanding Mayor Waylyn Hobbs, Jr., officially cut the village’s ties with ICE and bar the agency from using the armory and other municipal properties.

Hempstead Village, where the Latino population makes up about half its population, has seen a flurry of ICE raids, immigration advocates said. They said the arrests are stoking fear, separating families and decimating local businesses because people are afraid to walk the streets and patronize restaurants, delis, beauty parlors and other places.

"The community is demanding that the village make a clear written policy that says Hempstead Village will not collaborate with ICE by allowing ICE to use its parking lots or by sharing information or by collaborating in any way in ICE’s brutality and terror," said Nadia Marin-Molina, an attorney who is co-executive director of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network.

Seeking a written policy

The advocates want a policy in writing, similar to how a growing number of municipalities around the country are creating "ICE Free Zones." If Hempstead joins them, it would be the first municipality on Long Island to do so, advocates said.

Hobbs has said there is no need for a written policy. But his willingness to tolerate ICE in the village has shifted as ICE raids have increased and the community's fears have grown.

Hempstead Village "is in no way operating with ICE" and has no control over the federal agency, Hobbs said in a Facebook video in January, though "there have been videos out of ICE meeting or leaving from our police armory. As you can see, they are outside. They’re not inside." 

But he added that the village extends the "courtesy" to the FBI, DEA and other federal agencies to use the armory parking lot.

By March, Hobbs told Newsday that while he supports the arrest of criminals, ICE is "just grabbing people off the street as they're going to supermarkets, as they're going on their day-to-day ... business."

"Once I saw a switch and who they were actually going after, I gave instructions that they could no longer meet up in any village facility," he said. "We stopped that right away." 

But "I don't have to have an executive order to say to my police chief or my village employees not to allow ICE to muster up or meet on village property," Hobbs told Newsday. "So having an executive order — that's nice. It's cute. It's smoke and mirrors, but it's the same thing."

Cooperation or collaboration?

Hempstead Village Police Chief Richard Holland told Newsday that by law local police must assist ICE if federal agents have a warrant signed by a judge for someone’s arrest, but beyond that they are not collaborating.

"If their mission is to stop random people or knock on random doors without a judicial warrant, we would not be assisting," Holland said.

He said ICE is not using thearmory parking lot. "I can tell you 1,000% that’s not happening," he said.

Nevertheless, advocates said they have spotted ICE agents using the Hempstead armory parking lot on multiple occasions, especially since early December, Marin-Molina said.

"It was very clear that there had been collaboration," she said "The armory collaboration, that was visible."

ICE's use of the armory parking lot was documented in a legal filing, called a habeas corpus petition, that was filed in Central Islip federal court in January on behalf of an immigrant said to have been detained there and then taken to jail, according to court documents reviewed by Newsday. A federal judge later deemed the arrest to be illegal and ordered his release.

Marin-Molina said advocates do not know if ICE has stopped using the armory "because as community members we can’t monitor every single minute and every single location where ICE could be using it."

But she added that a written policy is needed so the community can see it and have some assurance it won’t change tomorrow.

"Without having something in writing it’s really impossible to know what the actual policy is," she said, adding, "We can’t believe anything ICE says. They have lied over and over again."

"There are so many different kinds of collaboration and we don’t know exactly what Hempstead is or isn’t doing. That’s why cities and municipalities put these policies in writing," she said. "So many other places have done it, there is no reason why Hempstead with the large immigrant community it has shouldn’t do the same thing."

Barring ICE from municipalities

President Donald Trump has said the mass deportation program is aimed at immigrants in the country illegally and with criminal records, although several studies have shown a small portion of those arrested have committed crimes.

The White House is spending billions of dollars on hiring new ICE agents and building detention sites with the goal of rounding up and removing some 1 million immigrants from the United States this year.

Nationwide, dozens of municipalities have barred ICE from their properties, though they cannot stop the agency from arresting people. They include Jersey City, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Denver, Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts.

Some cities such as Providence have posted signs at parking lots and other locations prohibiting ICE from using them. 

ICE did not respond to a request for comment. But it has previously called a move to bar the agency from local properties "legally illiterate. No local official has the authority to bar ICE from carrying out federal law on public property." 

The Brooklyn-based Vera Institute, a research and advocacy group, wrote on its website that creating ICE Free Zones "may be more symbolic than impactful against a supercharged, lawless immigration operation. But even throwing sand in the gears of federal operations matters."

Marin-Molina said the village "can't physically stop ICE agents from going on the street and arresting people. But what they can do is not facilitate and support that."

A national issue

Anthony Sabino, a professor at St. John’s University Law School, said the "very difficult question" involving local versus federal control may end up in the Supreme Court.

Others think local governments are on solid legal ground. If they cannot control their own property, "then that’s really troubling," said Susan Gottehrer, director of the Nassau County chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The armory dispute comes as collaboration with ICE is provoking controversy nationwide following the killing by immigration agents of two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — in Minneapolis in January. Congressional Democrats are holding up funding for the Department of Homeland Security as they demand reforms to the agency.

The Suffolk County Police Department has come under fire for allowing ICE to use at least three precinct parking lots, in Huntington, Bay Shore and Patchogue. Nassau County openly collaborates with ICE — County Executive Bruce Blakeman has signed a 287(g) agreement deputizing 10 Nassau police detectives as ICE agents and renting out 50 jail cells to ICE for $195 per detainee per night.

In New York, a bill called "New York for All" would make it statewide policy that ICE cannot use local municipal resources such as parking lots. It would also prohibit 287(g) agreements, among other measures. It’s not clear when it will be voted on. 

Marin-Molina said if Hempstead officials don’t issue a formal policy now to keep ICE away from the armory, Latino immigrants will remain nervous and suspicious of the village.

"Hempstead has to do something visible and has to be very clear in order to win back the trust of the community," she said.

Newsday's Arielle Martinez and Belisa Morillo contributed to this story.