Over the past year, we have seen increasingly rogue and indefensible actions taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis and elsewhere, culminating in the widely witnessed and unjustified deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents.
While these tragedies occurred far from our home here in Nassau County, they were certainly felt far and wide. We have all heard the concerns of our neighbors, increasingly disturbed by the danger posed by their own government.
Here in Nassau County, we are proud to support our law enforcement agencies, whose tireless dedication to public service, public safety, and community engagement make us the safest County in the nation. But that achievement came as a result of the hard-earned trust built over the years by our police, their rigorous training, and their accountability to the law and their neighbors. We are proud that our police department serves as a model across the country of excellence in both training and policing. The actions of ICE exhibit none of those virtues, and the actions of this one agency threaten to imperil our citizens’ trust in all law enforcement right here at home.
We send our prayers and stand proudly with the people of Minneapolis as they exercise their constitutional rights. Here at home, we stand with and stand up for our many neighbors who, right now, are living in fear, as more and more reports surface of law-abiding individuals being targeted by ICE.
As Legislators, we took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, which includes defending the cornerstone American rights of Freedom of Speech and Assembly, and the right of all persons in this country to receive the due process of law to which they are entitled.
It is imperative that here in Nassau County, we continue building our community as one where we respect our law enforcement and our neighbors, and we do so not by undermining the principles that have made our County the nation's safest, but by showing respect for the law, pride in our communities, and the belief in dignity for all of our neighbors.