OLA Law Passes in East Hampton Town, Forbidding Federal Immigration Enforcement Partnerships
- Jack Motz
- May 12
- 2 min read
East Hampton Town officials have passed a law, drafted by OLA of Eastern Long Island, that blocks partnerships with federal immigration agencies and outlines reporting procedures in the event of an enforcement action.
This move, undertaken at a work session on Tuesday, made East Hampton Town the second jurisdiction on the East End to pass the draft law, which is circulating the 10 towns and villages with a police department, as the Town Board followed the lead of the East Hampton Village Board, which passed the law at a meeting in April.
What the blueprint drafted by OLA aims to do, primarily, is both establish a series of procedures and training programs that would help deter the impersonation of federal officers and adopt local requirements for reporting enforcement activity up and down the chain, with the goal of making that information publicly available. The purpose is to boost public safety and accountability and clarify the place that local governments occupy, in the event of an ICE raid.
East Hampton Town officials, like their village counterparts, took the law a step further, though, by formally blocking cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The draft law does not call for this move, as OLA leaders took that clause out, thinking that it would serve as a stumbling block in getting the law passed.
Mandatory reporting procedures will establish a flow of information, which will ultimately become publicly accessible. This will require Town Police to notify the town supervisor of any ICE activity that officers become aware of. The supervisor then has to share that information with the Town Board and the task force. This flow of information would, theoretically, be conveyed in real time.
Speakers packed into Town Hall for a public hearing last week and provided a heartfelt and unanimous backing for the law.
“Over the past several months, we have heard from residents who are living with real fear,” Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said after the Town Board enacted the law on Tuesday. “People are afraid to go to work, they are afraid to go to the doctor, they are afraid to go to church. They are afraid to bring their children to school, to ask for help or to call the police when they need them. That should break our hearts because these are not abstract fears.”
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