Nearly a year after East Hampton became the first town on the East End to pass a local law regulating how police respond to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, the effort to bring the rest of the region on board has stalled, with Southold and Riverhead the two holdouts under the most scrutiny.
The law, formally known as the Public Safety and Accountability Law, was drafted by the nonprofit immigrant advocacy group OLA (Organización Latino Americana) of Eastern Long Island with help from former New York State Assemblyman Fred Thiele (D-Sag Harbor). Minerva Perez, OLA’s executive director, said it came directly out of the chaos that follows when ICE conducts raids in a region patrolled by 10 separate town and village police departments.
