County Reps, Activists React to Sheriff’s ICE 287(g) Agreement

By ERIC SANTOMAURO-STENZEL
COOPERSTOWN

What’s the story with ICE?” Otsego County Representative James Powers (R-Butternuts, Morris, Pittsfield) asked Sheriff Richard J. Devlin Jr. (R) at the body’s December 11 Public Safety and Legal Affairs Committee meeting, about two months after the 287(g) Warrant Service Officer agreement had been signed.

“It’s a cold watery substance,” Devlin jokingly responded before answering. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there.

“This program has nothing to do with law enforcement, we don’t go out and enforce immigration laws. It’s not our job,” Devlin said. “I’m training correctional supervisors to work with ICE to serve warrants on people that, they’re already illegal aliens in our custody. So it’s within the walls of the correctional facility.

“They’re already here on charges.”

Per the 287(g) agreement, at the conclusion of criminal custody, the Sheriff’s Office may hold individuals with immigration warrants for up to 48 hours to facilitate transfer to Immigration and Customs Enforce-ment custody, including by transporting the individual to an ICE detention facility. Devlin told AllOtsego on Monday, January 12 that no one in the Sheriff’s Office’s custody has yet been subject to the terms of the agreement.

County board representatives who spoke with AllOtsego varied in their reactions to the agreement, but said they learned about it after the fact. Devlin confirmed with AllOtsego he did not consult the county board or county attorney prior to signing the agreement. AllOtsego has obtained the agreement from the ICE website and published it at the bottom of this piece online for public review.

“I wish that we had a voice there. It would have been nice if we had some input,” Board Chair Edwin Frazier Jr. (R-Unadilla) told AllOtsego after the first board meeting of the year, January 7, which included public comments against the agreement and a standing-room-only crowd. “But ultimately it’s the sheriff’s decision,” Frazier said, adding he has since spoken with Devlin and understood his rationale.

Devlin has maintained that he alone, as an independently-elected law enforcement official, had the authority to sign the agreement. He did not respond to AllOtsego’s request to cite the law or policy to that effect.

In an e-mail to other county officials, obtained by AllOtsego, Devlin wrote that the sheriff, as a “conservator of peace with authority defined by statute and common law” who is independently elected and not a county department, has “broad discretion over law enforcement operations and may enter into agreements with other agencies without Board approval.”

The County Attorney’s office did not respond to AllOtsego’s e-mailed questions for this story, including about whether it would be possible for the county board to amend, rescind or defund the agreement. After press time, County Administrator Steve Wilson told AllOtsego the county had no comment at this time.

Representative Daniel Wilber (R-Burlington, Edmeston, Exeter, Plainfield), the chair of the board’s public safety committee, told AllOtsego he wasn’t “in the position to tell the sheriff how to run the Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s a legal position to take. It seems sensible to me. I’d rather have ICE come pick somebody up than have what we have in some of the other jurisdictions going on,” he said, referencing ongoing national events. “My constituents—I’ve heard from quite a few of them—don’t want these criminal aliens back on the street.”

Wilber said the agreement will help to avoid the “chaos” seen elsewhere.

A protest hosted on Saturday, January 10 by local chapters of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible was originally scheduled in opposition to the 287(g) agreement. It took on new meaning, and size, after the ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“I could anticipate something like Minneapolis happening. And I hate to have been right about that,” Representative Leslie Berliant (D-Cherry Valley, Middlefield, Roseboom), a new member of the public safety committee, told AllOtsego after she spoke at the protest. Berliant said demonstrators were justifiably angry, concerned, and scared about ICE’s actions elsewhere and “what the potential is in our community by inviting in an agency that has been clearly acting with lawlessness and making the communities it enters less safe than they were before they got there.”

Opponents of the policy have spanned from progressive activists speaking at county board meetings to a recently announced Republican challenger for sheriff, 25-year Sheriff’s Office veteran Michael J. Stalter. Concerns, too, span from general opposition to ICE’s activities to questions about allocating strapped county time, resources, and jail space to the enforcement of federal immigration law. Some have raised concerns that the agreement could damage the area’s national reputation, and therefore tourism economy, or that the agreement could put the county at legal liability.

“It seems to be the style these days for some politicians to claim that because they were elected, they can do anything they want and are no longer answerable to citizens,” Virginia Kennedy, leader of CooperstownOneonta Indivisible, said at the January 7 county board meeting.

“Prudence called for the county attorney to weigh in here,” Kennedy said.

Even if not legally compelled, shouldn’t caution have driven the sheriff to consult with the attorney and the board before this decision? As one of only seven counties of New York’s 62 to have entered into such an agreement, what price will Otsego County pay for its participation?”

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Darla M. Youngs, General Manager/Senior Editor