Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday issued an open call asking for photos and videos of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to upload to a new “portal to review federal immigration enforcement in New York” following a raid on Canal Street in New York City that netted the arrest of nine illegal aliens with criminal histories.
“New Yorkers who were present should submit videos or photos, and we will review and investigate any violations of the law,” she added.
James’s announcement came just two days after Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) revealed that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee plan to launch what he described as a “master ICE tracker” to monitor the movements of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — a move critics have characterized as a potential “hit list.”
“I shared this with the mayor (LA Mayor Karen Bass),” Garcia began. “Over the course of the next couple of weeks, the Oversight Committee will be launching on their website a ‘master ICE tracker.’”
“We will be essentially tracking every single instance that we can verify (location of ICE agents),” he added.
James added in a statement: “Every New Yorker has the right to live without fear or intimidation. If you witnessed and documented ICE activity yesterday, I urge you to share that footage with my office. We are committed to reviewing these reports and assessing any violations of law. No one should be subject to unlawful questioning, detention, or intimidation.”
She didn’t note that people in the country illegally are not “New Yorkers” in any legal sense.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said during a press conference Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wrongly detained four U.S. citizens during the Canal Street raid, holding them for “nearly 24 hours” without charges — an action he claimed was “lawless terror.”
“In other cities where the federal government has escalated immigration enforcement, local authorities have complained that federal agents have bent the law and abused civilians,” The New York Times said.
In San Francisco, which is bracing for an influx of ICE officers, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested Wednesday that “state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law.”
That said, the “ability of states to arrest federal officers is murky,” the Times reported. U.C. Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said if “ICE agents are acting legally, the state can’t prosecute them and hold them liable, even if it dislikes what they’re doing,” but if they “act beyond their legal authority, and violate state law in doing so, they can be prosecuted.”
Meanwhile, James was set to appear in a federal courtroom in Virginia on Friday to face allegations of mortgage fraud.
James was indicted earlier this month after prosecutors alleged she lied on a mortgage application to obtain favorable loan terms on a Virginia property she later rented out.
The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury, centers on a single-family home in Norfolk, Virginia, that James co-purchased in August 2020 for roughly $137,000. Most of the purchase was financed with a $109,600 loan that prohibited the home from being used as a rental or investment property, according to prosecutors.
By misrepresenting the property as a second home, James received a lower interest rate and saved “approximately $18,933 over the life of the loan,” prosecutors said in a five-page filing.
Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte referred the case to the Department of Justice earlier this year, prompting a criminal probe that led to the indictment.
