New York’s effort to make immigration agents show their faces was put on hold by a Monday federal court ruling.
U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino issued a preliminary injunction that said state officials can’t prohibit law enforcement officers — including immigration agents — from wearing masks while on duty.
But D’Agostino’s 51-page preliminary ruling let stand a new state prohibition on 287(g) cooperation agreements between local police departments and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The restrictions are shaping up to be a political flashpoint between Democratic state officials and the Trump administration, which challenged both provisions.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and her fellow Democrats enacted the new restrictions in May in response to aggressive tactics employed by ICE. Supporters say the law helps hold officers accountable and protects immigrants, but Republicans say it undermines public safety.
Monday's preliminary ruling means local police officers can't arrest ICE agents for covering their faces in public settings. D’Agostino followed other federal courts in California, Virginia and Pennsylvania, which struck down local restrictions on face coverings.
“The United States has demonstrated a likelihood that it will succeed on its claim that the Face Covering and Identification Acts directly regulate federal officers in violation of the Supremacy Clause,” D’Agostino wrote in partially granting the Trump administration’s request for a preliminary injunction.
D’Agostino said New York’s ban on the cooperation agreements could go forward because the state showed the new law was an “appropriate means of furthering New York's legitimate interests in protecting public welfare and choosing how state and local resources are expended.”
Last month, Attorney General Letitia James sent letters to a dozen localities in New York ordering that they cancel their cooperation agreements. Republican leaders in some of those counties have said they won’t comply.
Spokespeople for Hochul and James didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
James Percival, a general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, cheered the ruling.
“Blue states continue to stack losses as they try to pass unconstitutional bans on ICE officers wearing masks,” Percival said.
State Sen. Pat Fahy, an Albany Democrat who pushed for the masking restrictions, said the ruling could still be appealed.
“We always knew there was a constitutional debate on this,” she said. “ But either way, we know that the push from us, along with others, has been effective in sending the message that this was totally outrageous — the actions of ICE.”
During oral arguments on July 21, DOJ lawyer Brandon Neuman said both provisions in the new state law are invalid because states can’t make laws that regulate the actions of federal agencies.
“The key harm here is to the sovereign function of the United States,” he said.
Linda Fang of the New York State Attorney General’s office said that there wasn’t a conflicting federal law requiring face masks and the state wasn’t contradicting anything.
“When the federal government has not spoken, it can be subject to general rules that impact its function,” Fang said.
During the hearing, D’Agostino showed pictures of masked agents, stating at the bench that ICE was “a double-secret force I’m not so sure that the founders of the Constitution had in mind.”
But her ruling sided with the DOJ.
“New York appears to be well-intentioned in its pursuit of transparent policing,” she wrote. “However, the issue now before the Court is about constitutionality — not transparency or preferable policy decisions. There is a constitutional proscription on direct state regulation of federal agency operations. Whether federal law enforcement agencies have chosen to carry out such operations in a sufficiently transparent manner is an important question. But that question is not for this Court to answer at the present time.”
