Nearly six months after a series of federal immigration raids in Greenport, Southold Town officials signaled Wednesday that they are moving closer to formalizing how local government and police should respond when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operate in town, though disagreements seem to remain over whether that response should be written into local law.

During a packed special Town Board meeting Wednesday morning, immigrant advocates, members of the town’s Public Safety Task Force and local residents urged the board to adopt legislation proposed by OLA of Eastern Long Island, arguing that only a local law can guarantee transparency, accountability and restore public confidence shaken by immigration enforcement incidents in Greenport, Riverhead, Flanders, Hampton Bays and elsewhere on the East End over the past year.

Mattituck attorney and Republican Assembly candidate Stephen Kiely countered that the town should not legislate “from a place of emotion,” contending that the proposal could expose Southold to lawsuits, duplicate powers that town police already possess and complicate cooperation between local police and federal immigration authorities.

Caught between those competing visions is a Town Board that increasingly appears ready to act, though exactly how remains unclear.

The proposed legislation would require Southold police responding to ICE enforcement actions to notify town leadership, document and report the incident, identify themselves, communicate with federal officers on scene and, when practicable, request identification from those officers. It would also codify an ongoing public safety task force. Supporters say the measures would improve accountability and public safety at the local level. Critics argue they could create unnecessary legal risks and friction between local police and federal immigration authorities.

Federal vs. state standoff

The debate is unfolding against the backdrop of an escalating standoff this summer between New York and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement. After Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation this spring barring local police agencies and jails from entering into so-called 287(g) agreements with ICE, which authorize local law enforcement to participate in certain federal immigration enforcement activities, White House border czar Tom Homan threatened an unprecedented “surge” of federal immigration operations in New York.

Homan has argued that eliminating local cooperation forces ICE agents into neighborhoods and workplaces to make arrests they previously could have handled through coordinated jail transfers. “Hochul signed legislation that ended our 287(g) agreements, where one agent can arrest one bad guy turned over by a jail,” Homan said at a press gaggle outside the White House last month. “Now we’ve got to send a whole team to look for that guy.”

Hochul has rejected the threat, saying New York would continue cooperating with federal authorities on criminal matters but not civil immigration enforcement. “We’ll help you with the criminals — always have, always will,” the governor said at an Albany press conference following Homan’s comments. “But we’re not going to be helping with civil immigration enforcement.”

Republican Congressman Nick LaLota has argued that sanctuary-style laws unnecessarily hamper cooperation between local police and federal immigration authorities, making immigration enforcement less safe and less effective. He has warned that municipalities adopting such policies won’t have his support for discretionary federal Community Project Funding, saying taxpayers should not subsidize local governments that hinder law enforcement cooperation.

‘We take this very seriously’

At Wednesday morning’s meeting, Supervisor Al Krupski thanked members of the task force for months of work and said the special meeting was a chance for the board to hear from the community. He said the board intends to continue discussing the issue at its Aug. 11 work session.

Councilwomen Anne Smith and Alexa Suess both signaled that the town has moved beyond simply studying the issue. Smith said residents have been raising concerns for more than a year and emphasized the need to establish “immediate next steps” with firm deadlines.

“My hope and goal is to really narrow our focus to roles [and] responsibilities” and procedural changes the town can implement while continuing to consider whether legislation is warranted. “We take this seriously,” she said, “and we — I feel we really need to focus our attention on immediate next steps and to give you hard deadlines on when we promise to put those in action.”

Suess told attendees that Wednesday’s comments would help shape the board’s upcoming deliberations.

Toward the end of the meeting, Southold Police Captain Scott Latham stressed that town police serve everyone equally.

“As far as the police department is concerned, ‘community’ is anybody who calls 911,” he said. “We don’t ask who you are, what your background is, what your immigration status, who you love, who you don’t love. You call 911, we’re going to show up and we’re going to greet you with kindness, respect and professionalism. That’s the bottom line of what you’re going to get from us.”

‘Total civic paralysis’

For advocates of the OLA proposal, the Town Board’s promise of more discussion is not enough.

Magda Rodriguez, one of five task force members recommending the passage of the legislation, argued that February’s ICE activity exposed a genuine public safety problem. A first-generation American who works at a school serving largely Hispanic children on the autism spectrum, Rodriguez described the school population failing to show up after the Greenport operation and said she watched businesses, churches and downtown streets empty for days afterward.

“That is not a functional, secure community,” she said. “That is total civic paralysis.”

Rodriguez said that the proposal explicitly recognizes federal authority to enforce immigration law while focusing instead on what falls within the town’s responsibility: public safety, transparency and communication. If specific provisions concern town officials, she urged them to amend those sections rather than abandon the framework altogether.

Carolyn Peabody, another task force member, acknowledged ongoing debate but called on the board to act quickly, arguing that police should respond whenever federal immigration operations occur in town to preserve peace, document events and reassure residents.

“Despite the lack of consensus that occurred at the five meetings of the task force about the problem to which we were to address, I believe the actions and threatened actions by federal government make it clear that we, as a town, must attend to the public safety of the people of our town. We must, in every way possible, ensure that the resources that we do have — police, institutions, and people of goodwill — are clear about what Southold Town’s public policy is.”

OLA executive director Minerva Perez echoed those arguments, accusing the task force process of spending months debating whether a problem even existed.

“Children, too afraid to go to school. Parents, too afraid to have their children play outside. Families, not able to get to work or medical appointments,” Ms. Perez said. “Is this not enough of a problem?”

Speaker after speaker described the proposed legislation as a public safety policy designed to ensure that local officials know when federal enforcement actions occur and communicate timely and accurate information to the community. Several argued that residents fearful of immigration enforcement are less likely to report crimes, cooperate with investigations or call 911.

‘The fabric of our town’

Kiely opened his remarks by acknowledging “the sincere compassion and worry” that community members feel toward immigrant families and said those families “are part of the fabric of our town.”

But he contended that public policy should not be driven by emotion. Reviewing Southold police records, Kiely recited a list of offenses—including DWI, burglary, sexual abuse and criminal obstruction of breathing—that he said had been committed by undocumented immigrants.

His point, he said, was not to disparage immigrants generally but to argue that convicted criminal offenders should be removed with the assistance of ICE rather than through legislation that could complicate cooperation between federal and local law enforcement.

“We should seek ICE’s help to remove those people, and not pass a law to interfere with them,” he said.

Kiely also argued that many provisions of the OLA proposal duplicate authority police commissioners already possess, while warning that the draft’s enforcement language could expose Southold to costly litigation.

Glenn McCarty made similar arguments, urging the board to preserve the proposal’s public safety goals through internal administrative policy rather than local legislation that could create legal risk.

Chief Steve Grattan told the audience the Police Department is currently drafting procedures directing officers how to respond to federal immigration operations whenever police become aware of them.

“We are working, in response to this, on a procedure that that will direct our officers to immigration operations when we know about them — and we don’t always know about them. Obviously we take public safety very seriously, and these can be very contentious exchanges, as we’ve all seen across this country. So, having members of law enforcement present there for peacekeeping efforts is important to us.”

The central question now facing the Town Board is whether internal police procedures are enough, or whether Southold should enshrine those responsibilities in local law.

Town board members offered no conclusions at the end of the meeting, but after months of public pressure, repeated task force meetings and nearly two hours of testimony, the conversation appears to have shifted from whether the town should respond to the proposed legislation, to what form that response should ultimately take.