It is reassuring to see so many county residents stand in opposition to the powers in Rensselaer County that are and will forever be on the wrong side of history.
Dozens attending a public forum spoke in favor of the Governor’s law to end the so-called 287(g) agreements between federal immigration enforcement authorities and local police, which allowed some local officers to perform the functions of immigration officers, and also permits correctional facilities to house civil immigration detainees. Residents also took county leaders to task for their open defiance of the new law, which stipulates that agreements between the entities must end by August 25th.
Both the Rensselaer County Executive, Steve McLaughlin, and the County Sheriff, Kyle Bourgault, have condemned the law, which stipulates that existing agreements between the entities must be terminated by August 25th. Both men have stated they will defy the law.
They. Will. Defy. The. Law.
What does that make them? Heroes? Or Outlaws?
My belief is they are the latter.
When they equate civil immigration actions with criminal behavior, they are more interested in politics than community.
When they say they should be allowed to search for deportation-reachable prisoners in their system and turn them over to ICE, they are saying that justice for the local victims is of no importance to them.
How exactly do police who will not be tethered to laws that regulate them make anyone safe?
The answer is simple: We are not safer.
This is what we truly need to be asking ourselves.
Where is the oversight? Who are they accountable to?
None of us seem to know, and no body (meaning legislative body) has the ability to tell police what to do.
There seems to be no shared training, no true oversight; there aren’t even statutes describing what police work should entail. They make the rules they follow, and we agree to foot the bill.
ICE doesn’t even pay these deputized police to do their bidding. We do.
In deed, The Supreme Court has held on multiple occasions that police have no legal responsibility to protect anyone – even those with court-ordered protection except in very narrow instances. And that to give police any such a mandate would mean we would live in a police state.
But aren’t we in the same state when police are above laws?
I still reel from the sickening understanding — underscored by unwinnable lawsuits against departments that did not intervene in times of grave and mortal danger, qualified immunity, and the mostly toothless oversight by citizen boards — that accountability for police harm and corruption is almost unattainable.
How safe are we when police refuse to wear body cameras or turn them off, or when they provide contrary accounts than witnesses? What happens when they lie with immunity?
Immigrant criminal defendants are entitled to all the rights that citizen defendants are entitled to; it’s the most effective way to ensure CITIZENS are treated fairly and have access to our rights. It’s also important that crime victims have access to justice, too.
Democracy depends on the rule of law; it also depends on holding power to account.
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