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New York is creating a team of legal observers that will don purple vests to monitor and record the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement officers as they seek to detain and deport migrants, the state’s attorney general said on Tuesday.
The announcement follows weeks of sometimes violent tumult in Minneapolis, where Donald Trump has deployed thousands of armed, masked agents as he tries to deport more migrants than any of his predecessors.
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, said the state’s new legal observers would be volunteer employees from her office, trained to observe, without interfering, whether Trump’s immigration enforcement “remains within the bounds of the law”.
“I am proud to protect New Yorkers’ constitutional rights to speak freely, protest peacefully, and go about their lives without fear of unlawful federal action,” James, a Democrat, said in a statement. “We have seen in Minnesota how quickly and tragically federal operations can escalate in the absence of transparency and accountability.“
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said James was putting New Yorkers in danger by not working with ICE.
“ICE law enforcement wouldn’t have to be in the field in New York if we had state and local cooperation,” Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, said in a statement.
Trump, a Republican, has reserved his most aggressive surges in immigration enforcement for states governed by his political opponents, particularly California, Illinois and Minnesota. New York is home to one of the biggest and busiest DHS field offices, but Trump has not announced any major enforcement surge in the state.
He says the deportations of many migrants, including some who were legally admitted into the US, are necessary to reduce crime, although his argument is often contradicted by crime data.
In Minneapolis, residents have come out in protest, many blowing whistles and recording video as immigration agents in military-style gear roam the streets. Twice in January, immigration agents fatally shot US citizens who had come out to protest or observe: Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Minnesota’s leaders have accused the Trump administration of going too far and violating the constitutional rights of both migrants and US citizens, including their rights to observe and protest government actions.
In New York, small groups of legal observers are common at street protests, sometimes wearing the bright green hats of the National Lawyers Guild, focused on whether local police are violating rights or laws that protect freedom of speech.
But a formal state-organized effort to deploy legal observers to monitor federal law enforcement appears to be new.
James, an outspoken foe of Trump who successfully sued him and his real estate firm for financial fraud, says she will use information gathered by the observers to decide whether to bring legal challenges.
