In ICE partnership, Nassau jails many who don't have criminal records

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman was among the first local leaders in the country to join President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort by partnering with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

One year ago, Blakeman rented 50 local jail cells in East Meadow to ICE at a nightly rate of $195 per detainee and designated 10 Nassau police detectives to work as immigration officers. Nine new counties across New York and more than 1,000 agencies nationally have joined the program, known as 287(g), since Trump's second term began.

"This program is exclusively designed to remove criminals from our communities," Blakeman said on Feb. 4, 2025. "I want to stress that this program is about illegal migrants who have committed crimes. This isn’t about raids. This is targeted enforcement."

But the reality over the partnership's first 12 months is much different. Nassau officials are jailing more immigrants who have no criminal history since entering the United States than immigrants who do, ICE data shows. Across Nassau, where a quarter of the population is foreign-born, parents and spouses of U.S. citizens are being rounded up by ICE, often at federal offices where they’re applying for legal status. Immigration agents shuffle them between the East Meadow jail and federal detention sites in New Jersey, and as far as Louisiana and Michigan, then deport them.

Blakeman and other local leaders signed on to Trump's vow to deport "the worst of the worst," but just 26% of ICE detainees nationally have a criminal record. Less than 14% of the nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE last year were accused or convicted of violent crimes, CBS reported last week. 

Now running for governor against Gov. Kathy Hochul, Blakeman continues to back the program, often touting it in his campaign.

"I think ICE is doing a very good job," he said in a recent interview. "There have been very, very, very few mistakes. We haven't had any of them in Nassau County."

Jailed in East Meadow

Nassau officials held more than 2,600 immigrants at the Nassau County Correctional Center in East Meadow last year on behalf of ICE, county data obtained by Newsday shows. More than half of those held through mid-October, the most recent data available, had no criminal record. 

After White House officials in late May reportedly set a national quota that immigration agents arrest 3,000 people per day, Nassau detained 437 immigrants in June — the most of any month last year.

But in October, officials held just 37 immigrants in East Meadow. It was not clear why the number of detentions fluctuated.

The Nassau County Correctional Center is one of several stops along Long Island’s deportation pipeline. Over the past 13 months, ICE agents have arrested immigrants living along the Queens border and as far east as Greenport. They are typically transported to makeshift holding cells in a Central Islip federal courthouse or the East Meadow jail, sometimes spending hours or days in both, before moving to federal detention sites in Orange County or outside New York.

The federal government is reimbursing Nassau up to $1.3 million for detaining immigrants on its behalf from February through mid-October, Newsday calculated. ICE also paid the county $50,000 last February to kick-start the partnership, and reimburses Nassau for guards and transportation at an hourly rate of $37.

Under its agreement Nassau can detain immigrants for a maximum of 72 hours, but Newsday reported in December that county officials held hundreds of people for up to six days, and 16 people for a week or longer. Of the 366 immigrants held for longer than the legal limit, more than 60% had no criminal record, Newsday found.

Among those with no criminal record was Santos Banegas Reyes, a 42-year-old father of two, who died in the East Meadow jail in September. County officials declined to share details surrounding his death and the medical treatment he received leading up to it.

Political dynamics

Public views on immigration and deportations are evolving.

Other Republicans have voiced concern about ICE tactics, after federal agents fatally shot two American citizens in Minneapolis. As Trump's approval rating has fallen to 37%, the majority of voters say ICE tactics have "gone too far."

Republican strategist Mike Dawidziak said strong support for ICE could haunt Blakeman and other Republicans as they vie for moderate and Democratic votes in the November elections. The Republican Party has "to pivot on this issue," Dawidziak said.

"All they have to do is go back to the original mandate ... which was getting the gangs and the criminal element out of the country," he said. "Now you’ve gone away from that core message and into some sort of quota system of having to deport so many illegal immigrants a day."

Hochul is attacking Blakeman's views on immigration, calling for a statewide ban on local partnerships with ICE like the one in Nassau. Other Democrats are pushing to pass a state senate bill called the New York for All Act, which would ban law enforcement from cooperating or sharing information with ICE altogether. 

In his campaign, Blakeman has been a loud voice on immigration in near-daily radio and TV appearances . In most interviews, he repeats the same messaging, blaming Democrats for wasting taxpayer money on "people who've been here for 5 minutes" and describing Minneapolis protesters as "staged, paid professional agitators."

Simultaneously, Blakeman has voiced empathy for Nassau immigrants who’ve lived and worked on Long Island for decades, raising their kids in local schools and contributing to the economy.

"If you've been in this country and you overstayed your visa, you've been here for 10 years, you've got kids in school, and you're earning a living and you're law-abiding, I think there should be a pathway for you to be ... legalized and not have to worry about being deported," he said in a TV interview last month.

Blakeman declined an interview with Newsday on this topic, but sent the following statement: "I believe in a guest worker program for individuals who are law-abiding and gainfully employed, to provide a compassionate path to legal residency while ensuring that critical industries have the workforce they rely on."

Half of Nassau's immigrants who don't have permanent legal status have been living in the United States for 20 or more years, data shows.

David Sarni, a retired NYPD detective and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said ICE quotas pressure federal agents to go on "fishing expeditions," rather than target enforcement.

"Your local dry cleaner gets picked up by ICE now because it's the lowest-hanging fruit," he said. "Are we looking for numbers, or are we looking for quality?"

Blakeman has avoided answering questions about such arrests, like a Port Washington bagel shop manager, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen who was arrested in Westbury on his way to work as an electrician or a supermarket worker whose head was slammed by immigration agents into a brick wall.

Pressed by Newsday on the topic in an interview in October, he said, “[ICE has] a charge of enforcing federal law, and I’m not going to get involved in that or interfere with that."

Informal cooperation

Nassau’s partnership with ICE is restricted to its police and sheriff’s departments. The agreement gives those agencies federal permission to arrest and jail people for violating civil immigration law, whereas state law says local law enforcement can only arrest and jail people for breaking local criminal law.

A Colorado court found that one county's 287(g) agreement was illegal. New York Attorney General Letitia James has said it remains "unsettled" how these partnerships hold up legally in New York, and she’s asked local police departments not to enter into agreements with ICE.

Suffolk County, which does not have a 287(g) program, is liable in a $112 million settlement for a separate but related practice of jailing immigrants. 

The other 10 New York counties partnering with ICE have had mixed results. Broome County held more than 7,500 immigrants between March and mid-October, ICE data analyzed by Newsday shows. Meanwhile in Niagara County, officials jailed about 140 people between May and October.

Nassau is cooperating with ICE in other, unofficial ways. Newsday reported last week that the probation department is tipping off ICE agents to arrest immigrants at mandatory court appearances, deporting them before they serve any prison time for crimes like raping a teen or killing someone in a car crash.

Nassau police also transferred at least five dozen people into ICE custody last year. Newsday reported that more than 60 people arrested mostly for low-level offenses like theft, prostitution and drug possession were handed over to ICE from local precincts.

Under former President Joe Biden, ICE would not pick people up for low-level arrests, Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder told Newsday. But under Trump, Ryder vows that immigrants who would otherwise be released with just a ticket will now be removed from the country.

"The vast majority of the electorate in Nassau County loves the agreement that we made with ICE," Blakeman previously told Newsday. "I think it's working incredibly well."