Letter from CooperstownOneonta Indivisible, Butternut Valley Indivisible
and Indivisible Cherry Valley

Open Letter to Sheriff Devlin

We confirm that as citizens of Otsego County we respect the rule of law and the role of law enforcement in keeping our communities safe.

At the same time, we affirm that if law enforcement itself ignores the rule of law, we no longer live in a free and democratic country. Rather we live in a country where rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution are ignored by those empowered by dangerous weaponry and the lack of adherence to Constitutional principles.

Currently, the operations and behaviors of ICE often fit this description. For this important reason, we express our extreme disappointment that the Otsego County Sheriff’s Office has signed a 287(g) agreement with ICE. In summary, ICE is engaged in the following extra-legal activities:

• Arrests of non-criminals: An increasing number of people with no criminal convictions or pending charges are being arrested and detained by ICE.
• Minor offenses: Individuals with minor offenses, such as traffic violations, are being arrested and handed over to ICE after being stopped for other reasons.
• Deceptive tactics: ICE agents have reportedly used ruses to gain entry into homes, such as impersonating local police to investigate fake crimes.
• Mandatory detention: ICE has expanded mandatory detention policies, which detain individuals without giving them the opportunity to ask for release on bond.
• Harassment: ICE has seriously harassed—including with detention/deportation—U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status including minor children who have not committed crimes.

Because people’s lives and futures are at stake, we ask that you research for yourself ICE’s lawless behavior and its severe consequences and then reverse your decision to cooperate through the 287(g) agreement. The National Immigration Law Center has excellent information and researched, verifiable statistics on the damage to lives of noncitizens and citizens alike because of ICE tactics. Specifically, please visit https://www.nilc.org/articles/ice-is-detaining-indiscriminately-and-releasing-almost-no-one/ for their summary of ICE practices and supporting statistics.

We have seen ICE at work in both Cooperstown and Oneonta where working immigrants without criminal records who had filed claims for asylum and were following rules and procedures to achieve asylum were taken from their homes, detained, and placed into deportation proceedings. A brief Google search of reliable reporting will communicate the vast array of stories of people without criminal records, pursuing legal avenues to citizenship who were summarily arrested, detained and deported. Families and communities are being torn apart.

The current culture of ICE is guided by the racist language of Mr. Trump who, along with continually tagging all immigrants as rapists, criminals, and people who eat other people’s pets, recently claimed all Somalians living in the U.S. are “garbage.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who repeatedly claims her full support for the president’s ethos, recently led the Coast Guard in downgrading the swastika and the noose from “hate symbols” to “potentially divisive” (Italics inserted) until a vast public outcry pressured her to reverse course.

Yours is an elected position, and we are your constituents. We ask that you be on the right side of the rule of law and reverse your agreement to work with ICE. The three Indivisible groups who are signatories of this letter represent almost 1,000 citizens of Otsego County, and our voices and outreach exceed our numbers. Thank you for your attention. We await your response. Please respond to cooperstownoneontaindivisible@gmail.com.

CooperstownOneonta Indivisible
Butternut Valley Indivisible
Indivisible Cherry Valley