Ulster’s Sheriff Figueroa defends his stance on immigration

On April 28, the New York State Sheriffs Association came out against proposed measures to protect immigrants including: bans on face coverings and 287(g) agreements that delegate local law enforcement to identify, process, or detain individuals for potential deportation; prohibiting sheriffs from communicating or coordinating with immigration authorities on non-criminal matters; and prohibiting the housing of immigrants charged only with civil immigration violation in county jails.

Ulster County Sheriff Juan Figueroa, the president of the association, disagreed arguing that “crime victims, witnesses and community members [must] trust their local Sheriff to protect them, regardless of immigration status. Acknowledging the need for federal immigration reform, he said, “local Sheriffs should not become the enforcement arm of a broken system.”

Figueroa described 287(g) agreements as formalizing “local participation in federal immigration enforcement, that “create financial incentives for immigration detention; expose counties to litigation and most importantly, signal to the immigrant communities that their local Sheriff is an extension of federal immigration authorities.”

He also pointed out that “holding individuals in jail beyond their release date pending pickup by [ICE] poses ‘serious Fourth Amendment concerns,’ and said that local sheriffs don’t have a legal obligation…to assist with federal civil immigration enforcement.”

Read the full Daily Freeman story here.