Tom Homan to urge Trump to challenge New York law criminalizing cooperation with federal immigration authorities

Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting Director Tom Homan plans to lobby President Trump to have the Justice Department challenge a New York law making it a felony for law enforcement to assist federal immigration authorities.

“I’m going to personally appeal to the president to get DOJ to sue New York state,” Homan told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “I think New York state is beyond the pale. I mean, my 35 years of doing this job where the governor wants to pit state law enforcement against [federal] law enforcement.”

In April, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the state's latest budget, which amended a 2019 law that gave illegal immigrants the ability to apply for driver’s licenses to allow law enforcement officers to be charged with a felony if they share New York Department of Motor Vehicles information with ICE or Customs and Border Protection employees. The revised Driver's License Access and Privacy Act, known as the Green Light Law, has been a sticking point between Cuomo and the Trump administration before.

The newly revised law affects police forces outside the state, including Border Patrol agents on the southern border conducting checks at highway checkpoints who would not be able to verify a driver’s license and tag if either were from New York.

“This is another attempt by Gov. Cuomo to politicize his position on this,” said Homan, who has remained a close ally to Trump after working 18 months in the administration. “And notice, they do it during a pandemic. They take advantage of a pandemic to push a radical agenda.”

Homan, long rumored to be named for the White House's unfilled immigration czar seat, said the Justice Department ought to take New York to court because the law obstructs state law enforcement from alerting ICE or CBP if they find an illegal immigrant with a criminal record during a pullover or other interaction.

U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York J.P. Kennedy made the same argument, telling WKBW the state was “legislating obstruction” by imposing the law. For example, he said, Border Patrol agents in upstate New York who pull over a suspicious car would not be able to run the plates against the state’s database for more information on the vehicle and driver.

“This is shocking, this is unheard of, and especially during a pandemic that someone, the governor, who is under so much pressure thought about that to put that in there,” Erie County Clerk Mickey Kearns said. “They basically criminalize police work in this budget.”

Homan claimed the change puts the lives of federal law enforcement at “greater risk” because they cannot know if someone they interact with is dangerous since officers cannot look up a New York identification and/or license plate if it would reveal the person is undocumented.

The 2019 law first went into effect in December. The Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE and CBP, responded to it in February and told DMV officials it prevented them from conducting background checks for New Yorkers applying for its federal travel programs, which allows U.S. citizens returning from abroad bypass long security customs lines at land and airports because they have been precleared as low-risk.

In 2019, ICE arrested 149 child predators and 230 gang members in New York. Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said earlier this year that in the "vast majority" of those cases, the agency relied on DMV records to gather intelligence.