New York's sheriffs have lost their first attempt to suspend the state law that stops them from signing immigration-enforcement agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A federal district judge in Albany, Mae A. D'Agostino, denied their request for a preliminary injunction — and did so without ruling on the constitutional arguments at the center of the case. She found instead that the sheriffs may have no right to bring those arguments to a federal court in the first place.
The decision leaves the law in force while the lawsuit continues, and it leaves New York's county jails without the screening arrangements that some of them had maintained with ICE for years.
The law at issue
The Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, enacted on May 27, 2026, bars local governments and local law enforcement agencies in New York from carrying out civil immigration enforcement. Its most contested provision ends the so-called 287(g) agreements, the contracts under which federal law lets a sheriff's office perform certain immigration functions on ICE's behalf.
The statute goes further than the contracts. It also prohibits ICE agents from wearing masks while operating in the state and restricts their access to what the law calls sensitive locations — schools, churches and courthouses among them.
Who sued, and on what grounds
Fifteen sheriffs filed suit on August 25 against Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James. Rensselaer County Sheriff Kyle Bourgault was among the lead plaintiffs; the petition also carried the names of Todd Hood of Madison County, Don Hilton of Oswego County and Brian Schenck of Cayuga County.
Their argument had two parts. The ban on 287(g) agreements, they said, is preempted by federal law, which encourages rather than forbids cooperation between federal and local agencies. And the restrictions strip independently elected sheriffs of authority that New York's own home-rule and separation-of-powers principles give them, by voiding contracts the state never signed.
Why the judge stopped short
D'Agostino did not weigh either claim. In a 28-page ruling, she concluded that the sheriffs "have not established a likelihood that they have capacity to sue defendants for the alleged constitutional violations," pointing to New York law that narrowly limits when a local government may challenge a state statute on constitutional grounds. The present state of the law, she wrote, "does not appear to allow for such a suit."
She also noted what the plaintiffs had not produced: a single case in which an independently elected sheriff was permitted to sue in his official capacity to defend the powers of his office.
That is a procedural holding, not a verdict on the merits — but it is the kind that can end a case before the merits are ever argued.
The reaction
Bourgault said he was reviewing the decision and weighing his next move. He defended immigration screening inside county jails as an "effective tool for law enforcement," useful for establishing who is in custody and what they have been convicted of before.
James posted on X on November 4, a day after winning re-election, that the sheriffs' attempt was dead, arguing that local police should be focused on keeping New Yorkers safe rather than on the federal deportation effort. "We will continue to defend our laws in court," she wrote.
A law under attack from several directions
The sheriffs' suit is only one front. In late July, Hochul and James sent letters to a dozen New York agencies, Madison County among them, demanding that they terminate their ICE agreements; Hood said on August 17 that his office had done so. James's office is separately suing sheriffs to force the cancellation of 287(g) agreements and of contracts to house ICE detainees.
The U.S. Department of Justice is suing New York over the statute as well, and federal prosecutors have already won a temporary injunction against the mask provision — blocked by a federal judge in August — with James countersuing to uphold it.
The dispute was also on the ballot. Republican gubernatorial nominee Bruce Blakeman, who campaigned in favor of the ICE agreements, lost to Hochul, who won a second four-year term.
Reporting from CNY Central, Yahoo News and the office of the New York attorney general.
