By Jay Bradley —
On Monday, Oct. 6, a policy proposal to limit cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within the Village of Spencer brought out dozens of people for and against the adoption of the policy.
The proposal outlined the proper legal policy the Village is to take in response to federal immigration enforcement.
Mayor Gilbert Knapp said the Village Board of Trustees meeting was “standing room only” and that there was “a little over an hour of public comment.”
Knapp said he has never seen a Village Board meeting so well attended, and that there were many in support of and many in opposition to the policy in attendance.
The proposal by Mayor Knapp and Village legal counsel was in response to resident outcry over local ICE enforcement taking away residents with foreign citizenship in the village and then withholding the location of the residents following their arrest earlier this year, Knapp said.
The Ithaca Times reported that in June ten individuals living in the Village of Spencer were taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers following a traffic stop who worked at a nearby farm.
The directive ultimately did not pass the board of Village Trustees. In a vote to not adopt the proposal, board members split evenly with one abstention at the meeting held Monday night.
Knapp said he does not plan on reintroducing another version of the policy in the future.
The small village in the northwest of Tioga County is home to fewer than 800 people. It currently only has a single police officer.
Knapp said that divisive federal issues having local impacts is unfortunate.
“In our community, we’ve probably never had to deal with issues of national importance,” Knapp said.
“But that’s what’s happening in our world today. We cannot avoid it. It has been jammed down our throats that we must deal with these kinds of issues.”
He says typically, local government in Spencer is very civil and just deals with local issues.
“I think it divides us; that’s the problem,” Knapp said.
The policy acknowledged the village’s limited and “already overextended” staff and budget, and the local government’s constitutional authority to determine the scope of their cooperation with federal agencies.
It states that all Village departments are to prioritize the enforcement of local and state legislation and directs Village officials not to use Village resources to: cooperate with ICE investigations, detentions, or arrests related to civil provisions of federal immigration law; ask individuals about immigration status on any application for Village benefits, services, or opportunities; limit Village services or benefits based on immigration status; or provide personal information of any individual, except in circumstances when law enforcement believes an individual with a criminal record may pose a threat to public safety.
ICE action has garnered controversy in other parts of the Southern Tier, such as the arrest of the owner of Kam Fung Chinese Restaurant in Owego and the mayor of Binghamton stating that he is concerned by ICE’s use of unidentified masked personnel and that it raises concerns around constitutional policing, due process rights and accountability, according to the Press and Sun Bulletin.
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