ALBANY, New York — Gov. Kathy Hochul wants assurances from President Donald Trump’s administration that a very specific federal immigration officer isn’t operating in New York: The ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Good.
The Democratic governor sent a letter this week to Trump border czar Tom Homan insisting he confirm whether the reportedly redeployed agent, Jonathan Ross, is now working in the Empire State.
“If Jonathan Ross has been reassigned to work in New York, I demand that he be immediately removed and not redeployed unless cleared after a full, independent investigation,” Hochul wrote in the previously unreported letter. “I have no confidence that Ross can be trusted to safely interact with the public. Nor should you.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The notice is the latest effort by Hochul to place guardrails around Trump’s sweeping deportation policies — a push that includes direct White House outreach and expected legislative action to limit the reach of federal immigration agencies like ICE.
The two-track approach underscores how New York officials, including the governor, have been desperate to avoid a potentially destabilizing surge of federal immigration officers in the five boroughs, home to an estimated 560,000 undocumented immigrants.
The push also highlights how Hochul stands to benefit politically from taking an assertive posture against Trump’s immigration policies as she runs for reelection. The president rode back to the White House pledging to remove millions of people living illegally in the United States, only for voter support to quickly erode following the deaths of Good and Alex Pretti during January’s Minnesota crackdown.
A Siena University poll in February found 67 percent of New York voters believe federal immigration tactics had gone too far. The same survey found 59 percent of voters did not want to see more ICE agents flow into New York City.
Trump has dialed back the publicly aggressive deportation effort, but that’s done little to assuage the Hochul administration. The February death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a blind refugee who was left in front of a Buffalo coffee shop by federal agents, further inflamed New York officials.
“I have repeatedly stated that any agents involved in these types of incidents must be properly investigated and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law — not simply reassigned to administrative or investigative duties or shuffled to other states,” Hochul wrote in the letter.
Homan, who has become the Trump administration’s blue state ambassador following the deadly unrest in Minneapolis, met privately with her in Albany last month, and the governor urged him to not conduct a similar operation in the Big Apple.
To that end, Hochul and Democratic state lawmakers are also on the verge of approving a package of sanctuary-like measures meant to erect legal barriers around federal immigration enforcement in New York.
The measures would prohibit federal authorities from carrying out civil deportation warrants in sensitive locations like education facilities and houses of worship. It would also ban formal agreements between agencies like ICE and local police departments from coordinating operations and sharing equipment. And New York is poised to make it easier to sue federal officers if a person believes their constitutional rights have been violated.
The expected package of protections amounts to a sweeping blue state rebuke of Trump’s immigration and deportation policies. It also marks a change for Hochul, a moderate who as a local official two decades ago opposed allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain state driver’s licenses.
Yet some left-leaning state lawmakers worry that Hochul’s opposition to a strict ban on local police communicating with federal immigration authorities will leave undocumented immigrants exposed even as existing sanctuary protections will remain in place.
One legislator, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said the likely agreement is "really inadequate, arguably harmful, because her proposal would create an illusion of legal protections while still proactively permitting law enforcement to share info."
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