Suffern, New York introduces new measure to require E-Verify

By Suzan Clarke • The Journal News • August 15, 2008

SUFFERN – The village now requires that any new contractors with the village subscribe to a federal database and verify every new employee’s eligibility to work.

The program, known as E-Verify, is an Internet-based system that verifies the eligibility of new hires. It is free and is the result of a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. E-Verify is administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Mayor John Keegan said the three trustees present at Monday’s meeting unanimously approved the measure he proposed. He and Trustee Jack Meehan were absent.

“This is something that we want to do to protect the village and also we urge all retailers in Suffern to go into this program for their own benefit,” he said.

“It kind of protects the employee as well as, I guess, customers. I know if I have people working on my house I want to have an idea that I don’t have somebody just lying about their ID or address. … This might have helped prevent the Nagle murder over in New City,” Keegan added. “I don’t know, but it’s possible that if this employee who murdered that lady was processed, maybe he would have been weeded out.”

Keegan was referring to the April 29, 2005, rape, stabbing and murder of Mary Nagle by Ronald Douglas Herrera Castellanos, an illegal immigrant who was working for a contractor hired to powerwash the family’s deck that day.

The killing prompted fierce calls for increased local legislation to verify the identity of contractors’ employees.

More…

Long Island, New York passes illegal immigration bills

• IR1105: Introduced by Legislator Brian Beedenbender, 1105 requires all contractors in Suffolk County to certify that their employees are here legally.
• IR1479: Introduced by Legislator Jon Cooper, 1479 authorized a pilot program to mandate contractors with a county contracts to use the federal e-verify system to check new hires legal status.

Is this a New York state of mind?

Apr. 13, 2008 12:00 AM

Editor’s note: Following is an excerpt of a letter Len Sherman, co-author of America’s Toughest Sheriff and Joe’s Law, sent to the New York Times in response to its editorial Wednesday on Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

I lived in or around New York City for close to the first 40 years of my life. So I get the whole New-York-is-the-center-of-the-world zeitgeist.

I not only get it, I agree. I agree that New York today is the Rome of 2,000 years ago, the global intersection of politics, commerce and culture. I get the arrogance of New Yorkers, the us-against-southern senators/rats/French tourists/slush/Red Sox/and virtually everyone and everything else.

I get it.

What I don’t get is the arrogance of the New York Times, not in taking on Arizona and immigration, but taking on Arizona and immigration in such a shoddy, cavalier manner – and not only once, but again and again.

Item: In discussing the sheriff’s enthusiastic employment of Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, providing the legal authority for state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate, detain and arrest illegal aliens on civil and criminal grounds, the editorial states that his 160 federally-trained deputies are augmented by “what the sheriff says, without apology, is a 3,000 member ‘posse.’ “

The paper quotes the sheriff detailing that 500 posse members are armed, and come equipped with their own airplanes, jeeps, motorcycles, etc., while stating that “state and county officials” claimed that the sheriff had “grossly violated” the terms of 287(g). The implication is that this is somehow a problem – no, a danger – all those gun-crazy cowboys running around, violating civil rights, shooting up the town.

Fact: In the long history of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Posse, no posse member has ever shot anyone.

More…

Two New York towns vie to become first in 287(g) enforcement

By Leah Rae
The Journal News • February 10, 2008

• Read Comments(82)

While Danbury, Conn., is in an uproar over a plan to partner with immigration agents, officials in Brewster and Suffern are quietly moving ahead with proposals for something similar.

Both villages want to send local police officers for training so that they could identify criminals who are undocumented, detain them on immigration charges and place them in deportation proceedings.

More…