When news spread in January that a Mahopac school board member also worked for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), most residents attending the meeting gave Christopher Harrigan a standing ovation.
Fast forward six months, and the board recently voted 5-4 to name Harrigan its president. Residents are divided as ICE activity continues to escalate during the second Trump administration.
Earlier this month, ICE officers killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo as he was driving to a Houston construction job site with three co-workers, including his brother. His family said he was very close to obtaining legal status. The shooting came just days before men in Florida and Maine died in separate incidents that are part of President Donald Trump's federal immigration crackdown, renewing scrutiny of the Department of Homeland Security's law enforcement tactics.
Dozens of people have been shot by ICE, according to the New York Times.
In the Putnam County school district, many community members still support Harrigan. Dawn Pizzuto is among them.
"I know for a lot of people this is a political issue with regards to immigration," Pizzuto said. "For me personally, this is very much not a political issue. This is based on a community member who I've had personal experience with."
Pizzutto said she’s lived in Mahopac since she was four, and appreciates the job Harrigan has done on the school board.
"I feel like it's not fair to base who Chris is based on just what he does as a job, because I think that's very short-sighted," she said. "Because people can do all sorts of jobs, and that doesn't necessarily mean that their values are always aligned with what their job is.”
But, Baila Lemonik, who was born in the community, said she’s appalled that the school board voted to make Harrigan to president.
“I think it's a slap in the face to the community who has expressed outrage at having an ICE agent on the board of education," she said. "It's not my job to say, or my prerogative to say he can't be an ICE agent if he was hired to be an ICE agent and he is employed. That's on his conscience and in his morality. But to be able to control, I don't know, how many millions of dollars the budget of Mahopac is.”
Tanner McCracken, a former school board member is running for a Putnam County Legislature seat. He says Harrigan is an outstanding community member.
McCracken said he found out about Harrigan’s job at ICE when Harrigan joined the board and said Harrigan has had a “calming effect” on the board.
"In my opinion, the people that oppose Harrigan, this is a political view that they are using the board service as an avenue to have their political views heard," McCracken said. "They have an objection to the function of ICE. They disagree with it, and now that they see someone who is an ICE agent serving in a in a position of public trust, they're just going to use this platform to have their views spoken about, and they're not even taking into consideration who Chris Harrigan the person is, and I think that's actually very unfair.”
Lemonick does not see Harrigan's occupation as promoting safety.
“I think that it could be very dangerous for families and kids within the district, kids' friends within the district, to have someone in so much power who, actually, in the end of the day, has total allegiance to an agency that is bent on, as we saw last week, killing three people," she said. "That they don't have any scruples as to not endorse this kind of behavior.”
Pizzuto said, "Harrigan’s job is just a job," and if people only listened more, they might understand where she is coming from.
“Because we are a red county, people have like really bad assumptions about what that means, and although we may be Republican, I think most people are more in the middle, and I think personally, just our country, I think we have a lot more in common than we do than than we don't," she said. "I just think that the way things get addressed is causing division."
