Nassau County's ICE partnership prompts vigil by faith leaders outside jail

Christian and Jewish faith leaders and even a Zen Buddhist priest held a vigil outside the Nassau County jail on Thursday to denounce the county’s collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying the immigration crackdown violates their religious values.

About 50 people, many dressed in clerical garb, sang religious songs, listened to calls for immigrants housed in the jail in East Meadow to be freed, and condemned what they called a nationwide roundup mainly of hardworking immigrants who fill critical jobs in the economy.

"I think it is absolutely the most horrendous thing," Judi Gardner, 78, of Melville, said of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and its local collaborators. "As a Jew, it is frightening to me that this administration has scapegoated people because of their color and nationality just like the Nazis did."

"We have to stand up for our neighbors, immigrants who have made this country great," she said.

ICE has held at least 1,400 people at the jail after it signed a partnership with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman earlier this year, Newsday reported in July. Blakeman has set aside 50 jail cells for ICE to use.

As part of his effort to advance what Trump says will be the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history, Blakeman also signed an agreement with ICE deputizing 10 county police department officers, who like ICE agents can arrest immigrants without documentation.

Trump says his administration is rounding up and deporting violent and dangerous criminals, while advocates contend many of those arrested have no criminal records. They have included an honors student at Suffolk County Community College, the popular manager of a bagel café in Port Washington and a mother of five in Brentwood.

"The collusion between local law enforcement and ICE is something that is troubling," said the Rev. Canon Marie Tatro, who heads the community justice ministry for the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. "The fact that the people abducted, most of whom have committed no crime" and are "being warehoused in a jail is inhumane and wrong, immoral and illegal."

"We're here as people of faith ... to stand up for what we believe in and try to make things right and try to raise awareness about what's happening to so many of our neighbors," she said.

Blakeman responds

In a statement on Thursday, Blakeman responded: "The vast majority of residents of the county of Nassau are grateful for the partnership Nassau County has with ICE and the apprehension of the alleged MS-13 gang members for attempted murder and other crimes is evident that this partnership is making us safer."

ICE has arrested 1,600 immigrants with criminal convictions this year on Long Island, Newsday has reported. The agency has not released the number of people arrested who do not have criminal convictions.

The Rev. Kate Jones Calone, executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Long Island, which coordinates the 54 Presbyterian churches on the Island, said the faith leaders were calling for Nassau County to end its collaboration with ICE.

"We're here to say that that's not OK from the standpoint of our faith, that we see it as immoral and that we need to speak as people of faith on behalf of our immigrant neighbors," she said.

The protesters, who marched along Carman Avenue outside the jail, carried signs that said "Stop Mass Deportation & Kidnappings" and "This Chaos is Not Normal, This Cruelty is Not Moral." One marcher wore a T-shirt that declared "ICE out of Long Island."

The Rev. Michel Dobbs, a Zen Buddhist priest based in Bridgehampton, said he had worked with immigrants "all my life. My mother is an immigrant, and all of those of us who came from Europe or any other place are immigrants as far as I'm concerned."

"So I think we should be treating people kindly, with love, respect and dignity, not separating families," he said.