Nassau County Defies NY Deadline to Terminate ICE 287(g) Agreements as AG Prepares Legal Action

Nassau County is the highest-profile holdout against New York’s “Local Cops, Local Crimes Act,” which bans all local 287(g) agreements with ICE effective August 25, 2026. County Executive Bruce Blakeman — running for governor against Kathy Hochul and a Trump ally — did not submit proof of compliance or a compliance timeline to the state by the August 14, 5 p.m. deadline. Nassau is unusual in having two separate agencies with active 287(g) agreements: both its police department and its sheriff’s office. The New York Attorney General’s office has announced it is preparing legal action against non-complying agencies statewide. Elsewhere in the state, Niagara and Cattaraugus County sheriffs’ offices also missed the same deadline, part of a broader wave of Western and Southern Tier New York counties resisting the law.

This is the first major test of the state ICE-cooperation ban the timeline tracked at signing (2026-05-29–hochul-signs-ny-ice-cooperation-limits-287g-ban-mask-ban) and in its first enforcement action against Madison County (2026-07-30–ny-ag-orders-287g-termination-madison-county-defies). Nassau’s defiance is politically load-bearing in a way Madison County’s was not: Blakeman is actively running statewide against the governor who signed the law, making his county’s non-compliance a campaign position rather than mere administrative inertia — and the AG’s threatened enforcement action against a gubernatorial candidate’s own county will be the clearest signal yet of whether the state can actually compel compliance once the August 25 ban takes effect.