Protesters are calling on the Rensselaer County Sheriff's Office to end its 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A couple dozen people gathered outside the sheriff's offices in Troy Monday evening to call for the end of the sheriff's cooperation agreement with ICE. The protesters also called for the abolition of ICE.
"All that money and all that staffing and effort can be used for other more pressing things, like dealing with violent criminals that live in Rensselaer County, like going out there and making good relationships with members of the community," said Bryan Paz-Hernandez, a co-facilitator of the group No Kings Collective Albany, which helped organize the protests. "There's other ways to use our local tax dollars and police that's much more beneficial."
The Rensselaer County Sheriff's Office was the lone agency not to end its 287(g) agreement after a state ban on the agreements went into effect last month.
Sheriff Kyle Bourgault and County Executive Steve McLaughlin had for months said they planned to ignore the new law, even after the state Attorney General’s Office ordered them to comply in July. Rensselaer County has argued that the agreement, signed in 2018, allows them to keep communities safer and helps identify dangerous criminals.
Litigation over Rensselaer County's 287(g) agreement is ongoing in both federal and state court.
"This isn't just about 287(g). This is about tools being taken away from law enforcement to safely protect the people they are closest to," Rensselaer County Sheriff Kyle Bourgault, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, said after his office joined a lawsuit against the state's ban on agreements with ICE. "I was elected by the people of Rensselaer County to serve as their sheriff and to make the difficult decisions on how we keep this county safe, and that is why I will continue to advocate for the independence of the office of sheriff."
Paz-Hernandez says he and other protesters are "talking about potentially lobbying the Rensselaer County Legislature to pass some sort of law" to force the Rensselaer County Sheriff's Office to terminate the agreement. A member of the County Legislature's Democratic minority recently told WAMC that the legislature had adopted a "wait and see" approach to the issue while court battles play out.
"We're also going to continue protesting and continue putting pressure on the county sheriff's office," Paz-Hernandez said. "But yeah, I think that our best hope is probably some sort of legislation coming out of the Rensselaer County Legislature."
Rensselaer County maintains a "jail enforcement model" 287(g) agreement, which allows sheriff's deputies to identify immigrants already in custody and place them into immigration proceedings on behalf of the federal government.
The protest also raised $50 for the Capital Region Sanctuary Coalition, an Albany-based pro-immigrant activist group.
