New York can keep enforcing its statewide ban on local law officers working with federal immigration agents to make civil immigration arrests, a federal judge in Albany ruled on Wednesday, November 4, rejecting a request by a coalition of more than 15 county sheriffs to block the law while their lawsuit goes forward, Bloomberg Law reported.

Source: Bloomberg Law, November 4, 2026

U.S. District Judge Mae A. D'Agostino rejected the sheriffs' request for a preliminary injunction. The coalition's lawsuit challenges two measures signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul in May as part of a sweeping state budget package: the ban itself, and a companion provision giving Attorney General Letitia James authority to investigate sheriffs who cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The sheriffs contend both measures violate the federal and state constitutions. Wednesday's ruling decides nothing finally — it means the ban stays in force while the case is argued on its merits.

The law at the centre of the fight

The measure is the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, signed by Hochul in May and in effect since August 25. It effectively nullifies all 287(g) agreements in New York — the federal program under which ICE trains and deputizes local officers to perform certain civil immigration-enforcement functions — and it expressly prohibits the deputization of local police for civil immigration enforcement under that program. Attorney General James's office notified the 12 agencies holding such contracts that the agreements had to be dissolved by August 25, and her office has since created an Office of Immigrant Trust to enforce the law.

How the sheriffs' revolt began

Rensselaer County Sheriff Kyle Bourgault sued the governor in federal court first, refusing to comply with the act and seeking an injunction against it; 14 other county sheriff's departments then joined the federal lawsuit, among them Broome County Sheriff Fred Akshar. Hochul and James answered with a countersuit in state court, and the Attorney General's office sued the Rensselaer County Sheriff's Office seeking an order terminating its 287(g) agreement — the first action filed by the new Office of Immigrant Trust. Bourgault has said the agreement let his county transfer people with criminal history smoothly to ICE custody, and that he believes the state law is unconstitutional. Those are his stated positions; the court has not adopted them.

The sheriffs' legal case reaches beyond the 287(g) contracts themselves. As North Country Public Radio reported in September, only about a third of the 15 suing sheriffs ever participated in the program. Their lawsuit argues that the law's ban on 'formal or informal' agreements could upend routine informal practices, formal written agreements and federal funding streams that support local-federal cooperation on immigration. Their attorney is Mateo Forero, director of investigations at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The Attorney General's office has argued in response that restricting 287(g) agreements is well within the rights of state policymakers, that the federal law creating the program requires any agreement to be consistent with state law, and that sheriffs' constitutional authority comes from the state — rejecting what it called the sheriffs' 'reverse commandeering' theory.

The same judge already upheld this ban once — in the federal government's own case

Wednesday's order is the second time Judge D'Agostino has refused to halt the cooperation ban. On August 3, in a separate lawsuit brought by the Trump administration's Justice Department, she issued a 51-page ruling that blocked New York's companion ban on masked federal agents and officer-identification mandates — holding that the state may not directly regulate federal officers under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause — but denied the federal government's request to block the 287(g) ban, concluding the state had provided an appropriate legislative framework to protect public welfare and manage how local tax resources are spent. Hochul and James said in a joint statement then: 'As we have said from the start, New York's ban on 287(g) agreements is legal and will keep our communities safe.' They added that while the court had enjoined the mask ban, 'masked agents do not make New York safer' and their offices were reviewing legal options.

The federal side of the argument has not gone away. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Fox News that the state restriction will force more federal agents into communities — the department's stated position — and DHS has warned the ban changes how ICE must operate in New York, with 15 county sheriffs challenging the law in federal court.

Why it matters for New York's immigrant and Punjabi communities

New York is home to one of the largest Punjabi and South Asian communities in the United States, concentrated in Queens and the wider New York City area, with growing communities upstate and along the Hudson Valley and I-87/I-90 trucking corridors. For those families, the practical question in this case is who shows up to make an immigration arrest: under the law as it stands after Wednesday, it will be federal ICE officers acting on their own — not the county deputy or local officer a resident may know — and state officials, not local sheriffs, will police the line between the two. Sheriffs argue that cuts coordination they say protects public safety; the state argues it protects trust between immigrant communities and local police. Both claims are the parties' positions, and the court has so far let the state's framework operate while it decides.

What happens next

The sheriffs' lawsuit continues in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, and Wednesday's preliminary ruling can be appealed. Separately, deadlines inside the law are still running: the August ruling coverage noted the state gave counties three months to return ICE detainees held in their jails, putting that deadline at November 25. The Attorney General's Office of Immigrant Trust has said it will keep enforcing the act, and residents have been asked by the Attorney General to report violations of the law. Awaaz Punjab will follow the merits ruling and any appeal.