JUST IN: Kathy Hochul Holds Briefing On Legislation To Ban ICE, Law Enforcement From Wearing Masks

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]powerful conversation in my office with people who've experienced firsthand the unprecedented overreach and abuse of power by federal immigration officers in our state. And I heard from a father who spent eight months in a detention center. I knew his story. His son Norman had told me about it when in this very room when I gathered individuals number of months ago. Uh, I was overjoyed to know the reunion. Uh, Norman, thank you for putting a personal spotlight on what families are going through and your dad was just simply going to work trying to support his two sons. And I remember you telling me that all you wanted to do is tell your dad you made the honor role and he's doing very well in school as he's heading into seventh grade. Little conversation about the fact that he might be a Spurs fan, but we're going to address that.

[00:00:52]But I think there's an opportunity for a conversion here. Uh but but you know his father his father had to endure a living hell uh in substandard conditions in a horrible place and you know these are tough stories to hear. You know these were New Yorkers um subjected to this unprecedented abuse. As I mentioned I also heard from members of the clergy who told me of tales of people afraid to go worship.

[00:01:21]um a mother whose son was deported on his way to church.

[00:01:26]Um young man from Nassau County, detained, ultimately deported before he could walk across the stage and be presented his his high school diploma that he had worked hard for.

[00:01:45]and a reverend told me what we're seeing is a historic historical inversion of civil rights.

[00:01:52]Not exactly what I'm proud to hear as we commemorate the 250th anniversary of this country, which has certainly had a lot of ups and downs in its great history. Here we are charged with protecting it and ensuring that the rights that we've always taken for granted, had taken for granted are returned.

[00:02:14]So the men and women and children I spoke with today all bore witness to what may just appear in the news or the headlines to people. Literally masked agents, masked agents terrorizing hardworking immigrant communities.

[00:02:29]I also reflected on the fact that this issue was so top of mind back in January when the murders of Renee Good, Alex Prey blared across not just the national but the international headlines as we were stunned by what happened to two US citizens who dared protest the abuse of power in the city of Minneapolis.

[00:02:52]A few months later in my hometown of Buffalo, Mr. Sha alam, another immigrant with a family, hardworking, visually impaired, left by federal agents at a closed coffee shop on the west side of Buffalo and literally wandered for days and froze to death.

[00:03:18]ICE had the responsibility, the federal government had the responsibility to keep him in his their care and make sure he was returned safely. and they clearly failed in that responsibility. But the challenge for us is that the public attention span can be phenomenally short.

[00:03:33]A lot of questioning, a lot of outrage, a lot of attention on this back in January, which is exactly when we started formulating the policy that I knew we needed in the state of New York.

[00:03:46]A state like New York that has been viewed as a beacon of freedom, a place where immigrants could come to and start a better life and achieve incredible outcomes.

[00:03:57]That's been our story of our success, something we cherish.

[00:04:02]And we always will welcome law-abiding individuals who play by the rules, who work hard, get an education, and their families contribute to our economy, to our communities, our vibrancy.

[00:04:15]But sometimes as the public attention span has moved on, I want people to know that my attention span has not. These are the people that are in our state, a state that, as I said, has a reputation of standing up for its people now more than ever.

[00:04:33]And we think about having to stand up at a time when not that long ago, we were told by our current president on the campaign trail that he was only going to go after the baddest of the bad, the worst of the worst, the criminals.

[00:04:48]Everybody agreed with that.

[00:04:51]Everyone agreed with that. We want our communities safe. I'm devoted to public safety. It's my number one job as the governor, keeping people safe.

[00:04:59]But that's not how it was translated in the implementation of a cruel, heartless policy that has wre havoc and destroyed lives across our country.

[00:05:11]And that's why I said we don't do things like that here in New York. That's not what we're doing.

[00:05:17]We don't need law enforcement wearing masks. We don't need any of our law enforcement wearing masks. We don't need our local police wearing masks. We don't expect our state police to wear masks.

[00:05:25]And you will not see that. So we are now saying no longer in the state of New York will you be allowed to wear masks as a technique of intimidation.

[00:05:37]Also federal agents have been using local police officers where there's agreements they call them 287 g 287g agreements.

[00:05:47]This is basically saying that the local law enforcement who are paid for their salaries are paid for by the local taxpayers with support from the state. a lot of support from the state should not be deputized to do the job of ICE, an $85 billion agency that has plenty of resources to do their immigration efforts.

[00:06:09]Don't be using local cops who need to be focused on local crimes. Does not make sense. Does not keep our communities safer. That's what we're banning as well.

[00:06:20]We're also saying no to immigration officials being able to go into places we consider consider sensitive locations, common sense, schools, places of worship, community centers, hospitals, courouses without a judicial warrant. You have a warrant from a judge for someone's arrest. Yes, you can go there, but you've had to go through certain processes first.

[00:06:47]So, no longer in the state of New York will they be able to go after people in schools, in churches, in synagogues, other places, or allow schools to be a place where they collect data.

[00:07:01]You literally surveillance out front of a school to track who's going in and out. A scare tactic that really keeps a lot of young people away from school.

[00:07:08]Not the outcome we're looking for. And also, if your an individual's constitutional rights are violated here in the state of New York, you or your family should have the right of recourse in the system of justice in our courts.

[00:07:23]So, we're making it easier for New Yorkers to sue these officials who trample on their rights so flagrantly as they've done. Now, I'll be clear, and I'll say it now, I'll say it 100 times.

[00:07:33]New York is not a sanctuary for criminals and we will cooperate when crimes are being committed. Going after dangerous criminals, not the act of crossing the border, but dangerous criminals.

[00:07:46]We'll help him there, but we're not going to be partners with them in call in cl in carrying out unlawful actions that literally just deprive our neighbors of their rights. I hope that the laws that I'll be signing momentarily will be a blueprint for other states to follow.

[00:08:02]But hear me, this is a statement of who we are as New Yorkers. When it gets tough, there's no one tougher than New Yorkers to stand up and fight back. And that's exactly what we're doing here today. So, I want to thank everyone who's been part of this effort. I want to thank Bishop Hyde for sharing his story and Natalyia and you're gonna wrista Zabal Italia.

[00:08:25]Natalia um from you going to pronounce that for me? Help me out here.

[00:08:30]>> Much better than I did. Thank you. Thank you. Uh from make the exe co-executive director make the road Mad Aada Aad helped me with Mirage List. I always just call Morad. Uh he has always uh been a great ally. I just spoke to him on the phone yesterday. He's not here.

[00:08:44]President of the immigration coalition because uh he has to be in a in a courtroom. And so all the others who spoke out here today, uh Frankie Miranda and Dr. Shawn Wrightman, Dr. Kristen Foy, uh, Reverend Bishop Raymond Ramire, and, uh, Norman and Eric who shared their their presence with us here today as well. So, on behalf of the people of the state of New York, this is our time to act. It's time to show the nation and Washington who we are. Let's sign the bill.

[00:09:19]>> Come around me here. Come on, everybody.

[00:09:21]Come on.

[00:09:22]>> Now, we got some really cool pens here.

[00:09:30]Guys, anybody in the crowd? Sorry, you gota you got to bend down. The press has to get before we sign. Can we just make sure everyone comes down a level?

[00:09:37]>> Yodium, >> guys. Anyone in front of the podium? I need you to slide over a little bit here. Let's make sure everyone's getting their shot. Good, guys. All right, >> we good. All right, this takes a minute because I use a different pen for each letter.

[00:10:27]middle of Use that in school and impress all your teachers.

[00:10:54]>> Spurs fan, but we still love him. Hey, you should be blaming the Portland Trailblazers, please.

[00:10:59]>> I blame the Portland Trailblazers. There you go.

[00:11:02]>> Thank you.

[00:11:03]>> There you go. Thank you everyone. Thanks everybody. I said thank you one for everybody here.

[00:11:11]>> Some folks on this.

[00:11:13]>> Thank you so much.

[00:11:16]>> Now we can go.

[00:11:19]>> Thank you, >> Eric.

[00:11:24]Missing here.

[00:11:29]Got another whole rack. We've got a lot of pens.

[00:11:33][snorts] >> Anybody want to move up? Move up if you haven't had a pen.

[00:11:38]>> Thank you. One second. Okay. Go.

[00:11:44]>> Who's going to give one?

[00:11:45]>> Who's going to give one to Morad for me?

[00:11:48]>> I need to get one.

[00:11:49]>> Thank you everybody.

[00:11:51]>> You guys have a really She signed with yours. Please.

[00:11:57]>> No.

[00:11:59]>> Get some work pens, everybody.

[00:12:01]>> Oh, they're terrible now.

[00:12:03]>> Where's my pen crew here?

[00:12:04]>> Sorry, I'm a New York of our attorney from the team that can help take questions back if you want to get your question answered right off the bat here today. Juliet, you want to kick us off? Governor, um, first of all, congratulations on all these very sweeping pieces of legislation. How will the mask ban be enforced? And who would enforce that if these ICE agents are approaching people or going back down?

[00:12:38]How does that work?

[00:12:39]>> You know, I can ask uh Benner Sabrina to help out with the specifics, but basically, you know, this will be the law of the state of New York and they're required to follow it. Um if there's litigation, you know, we'll be ready to fight that to stop it. But the expectation will be the Trump administration will be required to say in the state of New York, we have to follow the law and that no one can wear masks. But there'll be enforcement mechanism enforced by the attorney general's office. By the way, all of this will be enforced by the attorney general's office. Anything to add to that? Um a and if there is a violation of the law, the court can issue an injunction to um require them to comply and then if they don't comply, then any consequences from the court can follow as well.

[00:13:19]>> So this is not like NYPD approaching them and saying you're required to take off your mask.

[00:13:25]>> No, we anticipate that there'll be a lot of private citizens who raise this issue, bring it to the enforcement entity, which is the attorney general's office, and then if it gets litigated, it gets litigated. But we feel confident the way we structured our law that the reason the law was struck down in some other states was when they narrowly focused on just ICE agents and ours is broad-based. This covers all law enforcement in the state of New York, state, federal, local.

[00:13:53]>> Um I know legislators um were debating a piece of this like of this package that would uh prevent informal collusion.

[00:14:01]what actually ended up happening and that prevented that from coming to fruition um and also you went from opposing um driver's license for undocumented immigrants >> over 20 years ago I think yeah I think people have evolved on a lot of issues since then and I put out a oped probably in 2018 that clarified my position on that so I think that's kind of old news um but I'll talk about where we are today my job is to protect people in this state and their rights are being trampled done by this rogue agency that has absolutely been unleashed by the Trump administration is out of control.

[00:14:37]I need to step in and do something and also want to be very clear that my job is to protect everyone. So I will not engage in civil enforcement. We will not cooperate in civil enforcement. That is the job of ICE and I wish they would stop doing it the way they have been. If they need to go after criminals, I'm not stepping in and saying we're prohibiting that. That's that's the difference here.

[00:15:01]We have to be able to protect our communities who are committing crimes against fellow immigrants or others as well. So that's that was the line. But I feel very proud of where we are.

[00:15:11]Everything we've done is going to put us in a far better place than we had been before I signed this.

[00:15:16]>> One more.

[00:15:18]>> Um why are you supporting Adriano Espayat? And >> we're talking about immigration. Well, he he was he's I believe the only undocumented member of Cong formerly undocumented person ever. Um so and Zoron endorsed his challenger. Um do you what do you make of that? He has a pattern of endorsing against the wishes of longerving Latino incumbents like Midia Velasquez.

[00:15:42]>> No, I'm not commenting on why other people do what they do. I've had a long relationship with Adriano Espat and uh he he was with me back when I was running running in 2014 went to his community he embraced me fought hard alongside me to protect the rights of his community and to bring major infrastructure projects were allies in the second avenue subway making announcement there but he's also the chair of the Hispanic caucus for all of Congress and his voice has been powerful and you know defending the rights of individuals I don't think anyone who's done a better job than Adre Espad and that's important to know. So, you know, this is not intended to set up a collision course of who's endorsing who.

[00:16:23]I support long-standing allies and supporter of mine and people that I believe in. So, it's that simple.

[00:16:27]>> Great. Thank you, guys.

[00:16:28]>> All right, got to run. Thanks everybody.