A fight is unfolding over just how far self-governing states and self-governing towns can go in resisting federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in our home communities, with the federal government on one side and New York State and towns like East Hampton on the other. The central question is: Can states or municipalities be compelled to cooperate? Or do we have the right to pass our own laws limiting federal actions that our local population considers unethical, unjust, and un-American?
We have been here before. In America, this tension is the tale as old as time.
If you weren’t lulled to sleep in history class in seventh grade, you may have a vague recollection of the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. These were two different laws — escalating in their powers — passed by Congress to enforce the vile and murderous slave-holding system here in America and to compel cooperation from Northern states. The Constitution had since the beginning enshrined the concept that so-called “fugitive slaves” should be returned to their “masters,” but over the years our representatives in Congress, concerned that non-slaveholding states weren’t holding up their end of the bargain enthusiastically enough, felt compelled to pass new, ever harsher legislation to twist the arms of resisters. An accused person had no guaranteed jury trial. Free Black people could legally be kidnapped and carried south. Anyone who obstructed an arrest, helped a fugitive escape, or sheltered one faced fines and imprisonment.
In response, Northern states asserted a form of states’ rights against the federal slave regime with so-called “personal liberty laws”: They argued, essentially, that the federal government may enforce its own slave laws, but it could not require our own judges, police, jailers, or public facilities to do the work.
In those decades before the Civil War, federal agents entered communities to seize people whom many local residents considered members of those communities. Disputes emerged about due process, mistaken identity, lack of warrants, and access to legal counsel.
Shades of 2026. What’s happening this year rings bells of memory, and bells of warning.
In January — that dark and terrible month — two American citizens exercising their right to protest were killed by federal ICE agents (Renee Good) and federal Border Patrol agents (Alex Pretti). In May, Gov. Kathy Hochul responded by signing legislation that banned federal agents from hiding their faces, the idea being that law enforcement should not be allowed to operate in anonymity. On Monday, Judge Mae D’Agostino of the Northern District of New York blocked that new law, arguing that New York State cannot restrict the actions of federal officers. It’s state versus Washington, D.C., all over again.
Noncooperation laws passed this spring in New York State and East Hampton Town and Village draw an even stronger parallel with 19th-century power struggles between federal and local authority. Our local laws aren’t an attempt to abolish federal immigration rules or to physically prevent ICE from crossing the town line, but they do bar the use of town and village resources to investigate or arrest people for federal civil immigration purposes, absent a judicial warrant. They say exactly what was said in the 1840s: We won’t do the work.
Surprise, surprise, this failure to comply has drawn the attention of our representative in Congressman, Nick LaLota. We don’t see a lot of him out east, but he has of late had East Hampton’s name in his mouth more frequently. On Tuesday, he wrote on social media again about our so-called “sanctuary policies” and continues to threaten to withdraw earmarked federal funding from East Hampton if we don’t cooperate. It’s bullying, and it’s obviously grandstanding, intended to win him favor in the White House.
He may not have been paying attention in seventh grade, and may not know it yet, but time and the tide of history will prove Mr. LaLota wrong — and prove right those governments (of whatever size) that resist unjust and un-American actions by federal agents.