Sep. 12—EAST GREENBUSH — Governor Kathleen C. Hochul wants New Yorkers to take a note from the people of Sackets Harbor when they protest immigration enforcement actions in their own communities.
Speaking with reporters outside of a Capitol Region town police station on Friday, Hochul said that when people seek to use their voice and their presence to push back on the nationwide federal immigration crackdown that has hit many New York communities, they should focus on nonviolent, peaceful action.
“Do what they did up in Sackets Harbor earlier this year, Tom Homan’s hometown, when there was a raid at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning at a dairy farm, really called Old McDonald’s Farm,” Hochul said, mistaking the day of the week of the raid.
That raid on Thursday, March 27, on the Old McDonald dairy farm run by the Robbins family, saw a mother and her young daughter and two sons taken by federal immigration officers, eventually being sent to an immigration holding center in Texas. The community response was swift and concentrated — a week after the raid, at least 1,000 people marched through downtown Sackets Harbor to ‘border czar’ Tom Homan’s house.
The result, coupled with backroom pressure from Homan’s longtime friend Assemblyman Scott A. Gray, R-Watertown, Hochul and the community at large resulted in the family being returned home.
Hochul characterized Sackets Harbor as ‘very conservative,’ but said they were able to rally together for their community.
“There were over 1,000 people who protested and made their voices loud and clear, everybody from the school superintendent on down and they put aside their partisanship and their critical beliefs and came together in support of a family,” Hochul said. “And guess what? We got the family back.”
She said that’s not a guaranteed outcome, but demonstrates that the federal government and ICE will respond to communities when they protest without violence.
This comes in the context of a wider rash of anti-ICE protests across New York. Last weekend, a group of over 200 people rapidly assembled to protect a team of three roofers from ICE detention in Rochester. The protest and human chain to keep officers from the roofers was partially successful, only one of three people was taken by immigration officers, and was mostly nonviolent. However, someone slashed the tires on an ICE vehicle, and eventually officers were forced to drive away on flat tires.
“That’s violence,” she said of the tire slashing.
“It’s inappropriate for anyone to commit violence,” she said. “But you think about it logically, it’s kind of hard for them to leave when their tires are slashed. Do you want them to leave the premises?”
And Hochul had a similar message for the people who’ve been protesting outside of the Oswego Border Patrol station this week — those protestors have been nonviolent, and recently video of an ICE officer pointing what appears to be a non-lethal weapon at the protestors circulated on social media and in news accounts.
“What ICE is doing, separating families and not being focused on the most egregious people accused of serious crimes is wrong, but I want to make sure that everyone makes sure that the use their voices, and not take up arms against these individuals either,” Hochul said. “We don’t tolerate any form of violence.”