On Wednesday, Assemblywoman, Nicole Malliotakis, said that she would not honor federal detention requests made on undocumented immigrants who have committed minor offenses. She added that she would collaborate with the City Council or even sign an executive order to have policies overhauled to limit the immigration detainers that must be honored by local authorities.
The presumptive Republican nominee against current Mayor, Bill de Blasio, who is a Democrat, told a news conference outside City Hall that she would neither support nor tolerate any policies protecting people who commit crimes against either citizens or immigrants in New York City, and she is willing to increase the list of criminal convictions that undocumented immigrants need to have before detention requests made by federal authorities are honored by the Department of Corrections or the NYPD.
Malliotakis says that detainers for those convicted of serious crimes would be honored but that she intends not to cooperate when it comes to just any crime, and that holding people in detention over minor offenses is not one of her priorities. Requests are issued by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to local law enforcement agencies to keep undocumented immigrants in custody for up to two days to be taken into federal custody for deportation.
Mayor de Blasio signed legislation in 2015 that meant the city would not honor such requests without a federal warrant. Malliotakis says she supports immigration but that de Blasio and his policies have resulted in people feeling unsafe.