Guest Column: ICE and Long Island

Although a thousand miles separate Minneapolis and Suffolk County, there are Suffolk connections to the protests in Minneapolis in which Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot to death by agents of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

A member of the House of Representatives from Suffolk, Andrew Garbarino of Bayport, “finds himself in a hot seat as chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security while amped-up Trump administration immigration enforcement actions deliver daily upheavals in Minnesota and elsewhere,” Newsday reported on Jan. 25, the day after Mr. Pretti was killed.

The committee is “the main House panel with jurisdictional oversight of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities, and more broadly, the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, Kristi Noem. But to the exasperation of the panel’s Democrats and others, Garbarino has yet to hold a hearing — or even schedule one — into the ICE enforcement actions that have brought angry standoffs with protesters,” said the two-page Newsday piece. ICE is a division of Homeland Security.

Two days later, Mr. Garbarino, a Republican whose district includes southwest Suffolk County, set Feb. 11 for a hearing.

On Jan. 23, Democrat Tom Suozzi, whose district encompasses northwest Suffolk, also got on a hot seat. Mr. Suozzi and six other Democratic members of the House, including Laura Gillen with a Nassau County district, voted for a bill providing $64.4 billion in funding for the Department of Homeland Security that included $10 billion for ICE, as the protests in Minneapolis began.

Then on Jan. 26 came the headline in The New York Times: “Democrat Who Voted for D.H.S. Funding Suggests He Now Regrets it.” Mr. Suozzi said: “I failed to view the D.H.S. funding vote as a referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis. I hear the anger from many of my constituents, and I take responsibility for that.”

Without the votes of the Democrats, the bill wouldn’t have passed.

Newly elected Suffolk County Legislator Greg Doroski, a Mattituck Democrat, issued a statement last week declaring that “ICE’s reckless tactics endanger everyone: civilians and local law enforcement, citizens and non-citizens alike. If these federal agencies are allowed to continue in Minnesota with impunity, it will set a dangerous precedent that threatens all communities.” “We cannot look away,” said Mr. Doroski. “We cannot surrender to fear. This is not who we are. This must be stopped. We must protect human dignity, uphold the Constitution, end this increasingly violent federal overreach, and restore local control. This is not someone else’s problem, it’s ours. Our future depends on what we choose to do now.” East Hampton Supervisor Kathee Burke Gonzalez last week declared: “An American exercising his 1st Amendment rights was killed by his own government. A son. A friend. A nurse who cared for our veterans. A person who spent his life helping other people survive their hardest moments, and he did not make it home.”

Ms. Burke-Gonzalez, a Democrat, said “the Trump administration decided that fear and intimidation is a governing strategy … The result is a parent grieving the loss of their child, and a country where more and more people feel like one encounter with the federal government could shatter their lives forever. The harm does not stop at one street or one city. It spreads. It changes how families live. It changes who feels safe asking for help. It changes whether a witness speaks up. It changes whether a child can breathe easy when their parents walk out the door for work in the morning.”

There have been many arrests by ICE in Suffolk and Nassau, and many protests of ICE, and pro-immigrant initiatives. “Long Island immigrant rights activist tried to stay hot on trail of ICE,” was the headline of a Newsday article in September. It was about Osman Canales, who I knew as a good student at SUNY/Old Westbury, where I have taught.

The piece began: “It was barely 7 a.m. … and Osman Canales was already out on a Long Island street toting his megaphone, this time in Patchogue, where he inched ever closer to ICE agents and blared his disgust as they made arrests. ‘Shame on you for arresting workers,’ [Mr.] Canales shouted through a megaphone. ‘Separating families … innocent workers that are being taken.’” Mr. Canales, an immigrant from El Salvador and a U.S. citizen, founded Long Island Immigrant Student Advocates.

Minerva Perez, executive director of the Organizacion Latina Americana of Eastern Long Island (OLA), speaks of children staying away from school and widespread fear among Latinos, with ICE actions creating “the most unsafe environment that we have ever seen.”

As I write this column there’s been a move in Congress to defund ICE. But Time magazine last week pointed out that in what President Trump “dubbed the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’” of 2025, ICE “received a $75 billion supplement on top of its roughly [annual] $10 billion base budget, money it could potentially tap if its annual appropriations are interrupted.”

Time also noted: “The agency more than doubled its workforce last year, growing from about 10,000 to 22,000 officers and agents.”

Karl Grossman is a columnist for the Shelter Island Reporter.