A LETTER TO THE GAZETTE---WHEN SPEAKING IN AN OFFICIAL CAPACITY, CROTON OFFICIALS NEED TO CONSIDER CONSEQUENCES FOR RESIDENTS

To the editor:

In 1986 at the height of the Central American proxy wars cheered on by US neocons, Jackson Browne wrote of “the men who fan the flames” and asked why “They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are, but they’re never the ones to fight or to die. And there are lives in the balance.”

I was reminded of that recently during the Village of Croton video publicity campaign purporting to reassure migrants residing and working in Croton. I wrote a letter in this newspaper (The Gazette March 20/26) taking issue with the morality of the municipal government putting our migrant neighbors at risk, and questioned the motivations of our Board of Trustees and local clergy in implementing this publicity campaign.

The Gazette (March 27 /April 2) had responses from Andrew Fitch and Joel Gingold. Both of those responses miss the point of my letter, which related to the potential impact of an official municipal media campaign. Mr. Fitch and Mr. Gingold (and I) are private citizens, perfectly free to say whatever we want. Nobody in Washington cares about what any of us have to say. 

By contrast, when a Mayor or Police Chief speak in their official capacity it is a different matter. That being said, since Mr. Fitch and Mr. Gingold have taken the time to write in I will do the courtesy of a response to the issues they raised. Because my letter was strictly related to an official act by the Village, I did not discuss my personal view since that did not matter; this has resulted in erroneous assumptions being made about my position on the substance of the local policy and the recent actions taken by the federal authorities.

I have never objected to the policy followed by Croton and the Croton Police Department with regard to dealing with the Trump administration regarding immigrants. In our system of federalism, it is generally permissible for a state agency to refuse to carry out tasks at the direction of a federal agency. The federal government may condition financial assistance on state cooperation, but the state may choose not to accept federal money if the state does not like the strings attached. 

A local police department has a different mission than federal immigration authorities. Local police rely on the trust of the local population (including migrants) to accomplish their daily tasks. As such, it would actually be a bad idea for any local police department to act as an enforcement arm of federal immigration authorities. That is why many police departments follow (whether as policy or de facto) a policy similar to Croton’s. The difference is that they manage to do that without global publicity.

The policy followed by Croton since 2017 is fairly mainstream. There are nearby communities such as New York City (on the left until Mayor Adams’ recent shift) or Nassau County (on the right) which are outliers, but those are the exceptions in our state and nationwide. While I understand that Nassau County has a serious gang problem which is a factor in their recent decision to sign a 287(g) agreement, there is no such need in Croton. There is a legitimate dispute about federal law enforcement access to NYS DMV databases, but that is a matter for Albany to resolve. Even the federal government—which enforces deportation orders—recognizes the practical aspects of migrant vulnerability impacting law enforcement investigations, which is why Congress created the “U” visa. 

As Mr. Gingold points out, I supported the Croton policy introduced by then-Mayor Greg Schmidt. I believed then (as now) that the policy is both lawful and pragmatic. I have no problem with Croton continuing to follow that policy, and I have not heard of any better alternative. 

I also take issue with the Trump administration position regarding revocation of status, in particular lawful permanent resident (LPR) status. While border security and foreign affairs are undeniably the province of the Executive Branch, the exercise of that Constitutional authority must still comport with due process. There is also the matter of equitable estoppel in many individual cases, which would suggest a higher bar to revocation of LPR status than is recognized by the Trump administration. Immigration estoppel was disfavored in decades past, but the judiciary has changed even while the Constitutional text remains the same.

Ultimately the scope of Presidential power is a matter for the Supreme Court. In the meantime we deal with the reality of ICE acting with an unprecedentedly expansive mandate. That has real consequences for anyone who does not have US citizenship. It has real consequences right here in Croton, and that was the premise of my letter regarding official government actions taken by the village government.

People are free to speak as they wish, and I am fully supportive of anyone’s Constitutional right to do so. Similarly, state governments are sovereigns entitled to set policy on behalf of their constituents, including policy relating to their relationship to the federal agencies operating in their state. But there are consequences, which can fall upon vulnerable third parties. The reason neocons were (and are) despicable is because, as Jackson Browne observed, they support policies that are risk-free to themselves, but cause other people to suffer and die. When states (or their subdivisions) flaunt their defiance of the feds, it is not the legislators who suffer the consequences. 

If those Croton videos had triggered a reaction from ICE, the only thing the Mayor and Police Chief would have suffered is having to read through nasty Facebook comments. On the other hand, our migrant neighbors would have had bigger problems than Facebook.

There is a big difference between 2017 and 2025, which is touched on by Mr. Gingold: the aggressive posture of the Executive is being translated into action in Trump 2.0. The biggest change is the President’s willingness to conduct removal of non-citizens, including LPRs. For that reason alone, the decision of Croton’s government to fan the flames was wrong. 

You can’t have it both ways: you can’t do the Nazi “then they came for me” analogy but refuse to acknowledge the very real danger of a spiteful Donald Trump ordering DHS to target Croton. If a black car pulls up outside Mr. Gingold’s home, it is his Uber Black, not Trump’s henchmen. But if a black SUV shows up outside an immigrant’s home, it may be taking them to catch a flight to El Salvador and lockup in CECOT. Unlike Hitler, government officials nowadays have biometric data: when an immigrant appears on video (which happened on the Croton Police videos) they are readily identifiable. This is no secret to anyone who has crossed a national border recently and had their photo and fingerprints taken, and it can’t be a surprise to the Croton police chief. 

To have a non-citizen appear in those official Croton police videos was at minimum a failure of common sense on the part of the Mayor and the Police Chief. It may be that the village officials involved in this publicity campaign did not read what Trump administration officials were saying to Gov. Hochul, Mayor Adams, and others, but I doubt they are that clueless. The motivation for the 2025 publicity campaign does make a difference. After the 2016 election there was a grassroots movement in Croton initiated by migrants who were uncertain as to how their status would affect police interaction. In response, the Board of Trustees held a public meeting which was packed to overflowing with concerned migrants. As a result of that meeting, policies were instituted which have proven successful in Croton over the past 8 years.  

It is to the credit of the Croton P.D. that the concern of non-citizens in 2025 has nothing to do with trust in the Croton P.D. but rather it is a concern with the actions of the federal government. The video campaign was not prompted by claims of migrant wariness of Croton police but rather because some clergy and politicians wanted to do political posturing at no risk to themselves but at great risk to vulnerable members of our community. We may enjoy shaking our fist at Bad Orange Man and trying to provoke him, but let us not sink so low as to call that behavior courageous.

Mr. Fitch conflates official village communications (which was the topic of my letter) with actions taken by private individuals (which I did not discuss in my letter). He states that the majority of Croton residents support the Mayor’s position. I don’t disagree with that statement, and as noted above I have supported the Croton position on immigration since it was enunciated 8 years ago. But support for the policy is not necessarily support for the manner in which that policy is publicized. 

My issue is not with the policy, but rather with the well-grounded concern that the manner in which the publicity campaign was conducted put our immigrant population at risk. Mr. Fitch does not dispute my factual statement regarding statements made by “Border czar” Homan and Secretary Rubio, which support my concerns regarding how Croton conducted the video campaign. Those statements are simply ignored by Mr. Fitch since addressing them would call Mayor Pugh’s motivations into question. Questioning the motivations of our political leaders is a necessary check on government, particularly in a village (and state) which is as a practical matter a single-party government.

Mr. Fitch claims that the video was meant to “reassure Croton’s immigrant population” and links that to a discussion about “the proper course of action in the face of Trump’s lawless deportations.” These are two very separate issues, and neither Mr. Fitch nor Mr. Pugh seem to grasp that. 

As Mr. Gingold correctly points out, the Croton policy has not changed. To the extent that there is a newfound need for a “proper course of action” then that is a matter which should certainly be discussed in public session by the Board of Trustees. But the claim of the Police Chief and the Mayor (and Mr. Gingold) is that there is not anything new with regard to policy or procedure, but rather that the videos were merely reiteration of current practice.

Mr. Fitch states that the Trump deportations are “lawless” but I have no clue as to what Mr. Fitch is basing that claim upon. Every administration has conducted deportations, including President Obama and President Biden. Is Mr. Fitch taking the position that Executive Branch power is dependent on which individual occupies the office? That would be the very definition of lawless! 

Is Mr. Fitch objecting to deportations in toto or deportations of specific categories of non-citizens? Is Mr. Fitch objecting to Trump deportations per se or the degree of procedural due process? Much as I appreciate Mr. Gingold’s assessment that I am a good man, our government rests on the premise that whether someone is good or bad is irrelevant: as citizens we don’t rely on the beneficence of the people who run our government. This is the famous argument of Federalist 51. I object to Trump’s immigration actions for the same reason I object to Biden’s student loan write-offs: such actions are contrary to the spirit and letter of our Constitution. Trump derangement syndrome plays into a view of Executive Branch power which eats away at our tattered civic fabric.

I get the feeling that Mr. Fitch is one of those “Orange Man Bad” folks. My objection was that certain specific actions of the Croton government put immigrants at risk, and that they should take into account certain specific statements made by specific federal officials and not poke the bear. Mr. Fitch takes that to mean that the alternative is to “cower.” Seriously? There is a wide spectrum between trying to trigger an ICE raid and cowering, and the reflexive inclination of Mr. Fitch to go from one extreme to the other is not productive when dealing an issue which goes beyond the NYS bubble.

It is understandable that we increasingly resort to overwrought emotion as a substitute for logic and pragmatic solution finding. At our village, town, county, and state level we are accustomed to conform and regurgitate the proper viewpoints fed to us by our ruling party. The only way that we can achieve even the illusion of agency is to get emotional. That works much of the time, but it has limits. 

When dealing with immigration matters, it is impossible to avoid taking into account federal agencies—and that includes the occupant of the Oval Office. Sometimes we deal with an Obama “Deporter-in-Chief,” sometimes a Trump1.0 “build the wall,” sometimes a Biden “let ‘em all in” approach, and in 2025 we deal with a Trump2.0 “we don’t need no stinkin’ due process” approach. That is life. Grow up and calmly make decisions based on the knowledge that not everyone on the field is playing for your team.

You don’t have to like the current President. You don’t have to agree with his policies. You might even believe those policies to violate the Constitution. But what a responsible Mayor and Police Chief should do is to be aware not simply of the rules of the game, but how your opposition might react to your moves. That is not what our Croton officials did in this case. They chose to be the men who fan the flames, and if they had triggered an ICE raid their lives would not be the ones in the balance.

--Paul Steinberg, Croton-on-Hudson