Fifteen New York sheriffs filed a federal lawsuit against Governor Kathy Hochul on August 25, the day a new state law took effect banning cooperation with ICE.
The sheriffs went to court in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, naming Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James, and the State of New York as defendants. They are asking a federal judge to block enforcement of the law while their constitutional challenge moves forward. Their core argument: Albany cannot legally strip independently elected sheriffs of authority granted to them under federal law.
The law at the center of the dispute is called the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act. It targets agreements made under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allow trained local officers to carry out certain immigration enforcement duties under ICE supervision. Under the new statute, local agencies cannot enter or maintain those arrangements. Agencies that hold people solely for federal civil immigration violations must terminate any housing agreements by November 25. Local police may still assist ICE on criminal investigations and can detain individuals wanted under a judicial warrant.
The case is titled Bourgault v. Hochul, with Rensselaer County Sheriff Kyle Bourgault as the lead plaintiff. The sheriffs are seeking a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, and a permanent injunction. Their complaint also targets a second statute that created the Office of Immigrant Trust under James, which has authority to investigate suspected violations of the restrictions.
As originally reported, the Federation for American Immigration Reform is representing the plaintiffs, who lead departments across fifteen counties including Orange, Broome, Saratoga, Rensselaer, and Jefferson, among others.
The complaint argues that the new provisions go well beyond setting a policy preference. They nullify the ability of independently elected constitutional officers to enter into contracts authorized by federal law,” the filing states, according to the Times Union. The sheriffs say the law puts their core law enforcement decisions under centralized state control, and they describe the resulting harm as “imminent and irreparable.”
Broome County Sheriff Fred Akshar called the legislation an unconstitutional attack on county-level decision making. He argued the state constitution establishes sheriffs as elected officers accountable to local voters, not to officials in Albany. “It is not some bureaucrat in Albany, it is the good people in their respective communities,” Akshar said. He framed the lawsuit as being fundamentally about keeping local decisions in local hands.
Hochul pushed back hard. She promised legal consequences for any department that refuses to terminate its ICE agreement. “If you’re trying it again, I say bring it on,” she said. She and James jointly called the lawsuit a “frivolous waste of taxpayer dollars.”
A federal judge previously denied the Justice Department’s separate request for a preliminary injunction against the same ban, finding at that stage that the federal government had not demonstrated a likely path to success on its specific claims. That ruling did not address the sheriffs’ distinct arguments about their authority as elected constitutional officers.