ICE Is Already Here.

OpEd by Tae-eun Leiah Hartley

Rockland Needs Protection. Pass SADA Now. 

Have you noticed the empty storefronts at the Palisades Center? You should expect more of those. The delis and restaurants closing in Spring Valley, the landscaping crews that stopped showing up, the caregivers who aren’t there for our children and elderly anymore. All of these and more are directly tied to ICE operations. Even our schools are emptying out: East Ramapo is seeing roughly a 10% absentee rate tied directly to immigration fear. 

Trump’s ICE has been operating in Rockland for over a year, concentrated in Spring Valley, Haverstraw, and most recently Suffern, removing over 100 people a month. Most of them do not have criminal records, and some have even been taken when they go to their hearings to progress their paperwork and fulfill their immigration requirements “the right way”. Many others are self-deporting: mothers seeking asylum who would rather leave than risk losing their children. My own partner moved to Europe last week after a memo released from the White House directing ICE to start targeting people who seem transgender.

Some residents assume that because ICE has been a quiet presence here, it will stay that way. Minnesota offers a sobering correction. ICE operated there for 23 years as routine, unremarkable background noise. Then, between December 2025 and February 2026, Operation Metro Surge turned that quiet presence into something unrecognizable. Of the nearly 4,000 people arrested, 75% had no criminal record. Judges dealing with cleaning up after the ICE operation in Minnesota found that the overwhelming majority of the cases involved people lawfully present in the United States.

Over the past year, judges nationwide have ruled more than 7,000 times that ICE illegally detained or deported people from this country. That’s only the cases where people could afford lawyers capable of fighting back. The real number is much higher.

In Rockland, immigrants are hesitant to use the county health department. They are not accessing mental health services, skipping vaccinations for themselves and their children, or staying away from food banks. They are afraid to lead their normal lives.

The Safety & Dignity for All Act (SADA), currently in committee at the Rockland County Legislature, was written to address this. 

Firstly, SADA does not prevent cooperation with federal authorities on criminal matters, and full cooperation is required whenever a proper judicial warrant arrives. Secondly, it ensures that our resources and our people stay right here where they belong.

Here’s how SADA protects our tax dollars and our neighbors:

• Ensures our county resources, staff, facilities, and funding cannot be used to detain people with no criminal record on behalf of ICE
• Ensures no one can be held in county custody past their legal release time for immigration purposes unless a real judge has signed a warrant, not an ICE administrator
• Protects our personal information in county databases, including ensuring our addresses, employers, or license plate numbers cannot be handed to federal immigration agents without that same judicial standard
• Extends Miranda rights to anyone ICE places a hold on while in county custody, ensuring immediate notification so they can properly exercise their legal right to Habeas petitions
• Enshrines Transparency: any changes to how the county handles these interactions must be reported publicly so residents can see exactly what is being done in their name

Westchester County passed similar protections across the river eight years ago, and their law is still in place. Local law enforcement’s ability to do its job was not diminished, and crime rates have in fact gone down.

County Executive Ed Day needs to stop standing in the way of this bill. The Rockland County Legislature needs to pass it now.

As a disabled veteran who served alongside people from Samoa, the Philippines, Haiti and dozens of other nations worldwide, people who were willing to die for the chance to earn the citizenship I was born into, I know what these values are worth and what it costs when we abandon them, one closed storefront and one empty classroom at a time.

Please call your County Legislator by going to this website https://legislature.rocklandcountyny.gov/county-legislature/contact-county-legislature and tell them to pass this necessary safety measure.