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Democrats Revive Nullification With Refusals To Assist Federal Immigration Enforcement

What a state cannot be permitted to do is transform a policy disagreement into an exercise of state power to nullify federal authority.

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New York’s “Local Cops, Local Crimes Act” is being sold as a public-safety measure. Its premise, however, reaches far beyond the question of how local police should allocate their time. The law forbids New York’s local governments and law-enforcement agencies from continuing or entering into agreements with the federal government under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996, and it declares existing agreements void and unenforceable under state law.

That matters because Congress expressly created Section 287(g) to permit the federal government to enter into mutually beneficial written agreements with states and political subdivisions that allow qualified state or local officials to perform specific immigration-related functions. New York’s new law therefore is not merely a declaration that Albany will decline to participate in a federal initiative in the future. It expressly commands local entities to terminate and abandon existing federal agreements.

Fifteen New York sheriffs have sued in federal court to challenge the statute. Bourgault v. Hochul was filed on Aug. 25, 2026, the ban’s effective date. The plaintiffs seek emergency relief arguing that the state has unlawfully interfered with federally authorized agreements and with the authority of locally elected sheriffs to make law enforcement decisions for their counties. The case is still pending.

The constitutional stakes are straightforward to describe, even if the ultimate legal answer is not. The supremacy clause makes the federal Constitution and valid federal laws “the supreme Law of the Land.” This means that federal law takes precedence over contrary or conflicting state law. Federal preemption doctrine accordingly prevents a state from enforcing its own law when that law conflicts with federal laws or obstructs the execution of federal objectives, especially in a field such as immigration where Congress has enacted a comprehensive enforcement scheme.

But there is a complication that should not be overlooked. The federal statute says that the functions performed by participating states or local officers must be carried out “to the extent consistent with State and local law.” That language gives........

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