Update July 31, 2026:
The Town Board has scheduled a special meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 4 at 2:30 p.m. to continue this discussion. That meeting will also be held in the basement meeting room at the Town Hall Annex.
The town has also recently updated its website to include documents to be discussed — they’re available online here: https://www.southoldtownny.gov/2517/Public-Safety-Task-Force
Original Story Follows:
About 50 residents packed into the basement meeting room of the Southold Town Hall Annex early Wednesday morning to air their concerns about public safety during immigration raids, while Southold Town Police said they are considering department policy to play a peacekeeping role during federal immigration enforcement efforts here.
The conversation is expected to continue at the Town Board’s Aug. 11 work session.
It was the first public town meeting with representatives of a Public Safety Task Force, convened in February after a chaotic immigration enforcement action in Greenport that led to the detention of three men who did not have criminal records. Greenport had also been the site of immigration raids in 2025, including one in which a father was detained while doing laundry with his two sons.
Not long after the February raid, Latino advocacy group OLA of Eastern Long Island created a draft local law to guide policy for what role the town and other local institutions would play in keeping people who live here safe. East Hampton Town and East Hampton Village have both passed versions of the law.
Many residents who spoke Wednesday were concerned about the length of time it had taken for the task force to deliberate, and also about the lack of consensus on the committee about whether to adopt the OLA law. They also raised concerns about guidance from the Town Attorney cautioning against the passage of the local law and his concern about Congressman Nick LaLota’s threates to withhold funding from towns that do adopt the law, as reported by The Beacon earlier this week.
Five community members who served on the volunteer task force have drafted their own set of recommendations, chief among them the passage of the a version of the OLA law tailored to the needs of Southold, including provisions that town police report any verified immigration actions to the town supervisor and mayor, who would then alert their boards and school and hospital administrations.
They also recommended the town create education tools to help the public identify Southold Town police officers and differentiate them from ICE; coordination with schools, hospitals and clinics to “ascertain their planned protocols for emergency response to immigration enforcement attempts to enter their premises; the hiring of more police officers and reassignment of more officers to Greenport; additional police de-escalation training and limiting access to license plate recognition technology.
While a full list of members of the Task Force has not been made public, Town Councilman Brian Mealy, who sits on the Task Force, said at Wednesday’s meeting that the town had initially been hoping to protect the volunteers by not revealing their names, after the formation of the Task Force proved to be highly controversial.
Southold Town Police Chief Steve Grattan, who served on the Task Force, said “there was some heated debate and exchanges and we came up with some common ground. We are working on a procedure that will direct our officers to immigration operations when we know about them. We don’t always know.”
“Having members of law enforcement there for peacekeeping efforts is important to us,” he said.
Several of the five community members who had drafted the recommendations spoke publicly at Wednesday’s meeting, and another, Sonia Spar, also spoke passionately about their work at the Town Board’s Tuesday evening meeting.
Hearing From the Southold Five
Task Force Member Magda Rodriguez, an educator, shared her concerns about the decline in public trust since the immigration raids in Greenport, describing the “total civic paralysis” that she saw in Greenport after the raids, as shops didn’t open and students didn’t attend schools the following week.
“We were not a functional, secure community,” she said. “That instability affects every business owner and resident of this town.”
She also urged the town to not be swayed by threats from Congressman LaLota to withhold funding from towns that pass the OLA law, saying that despite Congressman’s recent visit with a check for $1 million for police vehicles and radios, the town should not feel it has to make a “choice between protecting federal funding and protecting the community.”
She also urged the town to prepare guidance on federal agents’ access to “non-government public property.”
“These public safety measures are meant to provide clarity, not conflict,” she said. “We all want our residents to feel safe calling 911.”
Her comments were met by hearty applause from the crowd.
Task Force member Kristie Lutz reminded the crowd that, just since the Task Force’s last meeting in June, two more people had been murdered by ICE agents, in Texas and Maine, while a group of men impersonating ICE agents had assaulted a woman in her car in Oregon.
“All of these are things that could happen in our town,” she said.
Ms. Spar also reminded the crowd of the recent killings at Tuesday evening’s Town Board meeting.
“Innocent people have been harmed because assumptions were made based on their appearance, their language, their ethnicity, and their perceived identity,” she said. “When those characteristics become the basis for suspicion, let’s call it for what it is: Racial profiling. Racial profiling is not a theoretical concern. It is a public safety issue with real consequences.”
She added that racial profiling damages one of local law enforcement’s greatest tools — its trust with the community.
“Sometimes we underestimate the power of simply bringing people together,” she said. “Our clergy members understand this. Community leaders understand this. Sitting together, sharing food, and breaking bread are not symbolic gestures. They are the foundation of community. When people know each other, they are more likely to care for each other. When people have relationships, they are more likely to stand together during difficult moments. When communities are connected, they are stronger and safer.”
OLA Executive Director Minerva Perez also highlighted the dangers of racial profiling, saying that ICE has chosen a “seine net approach” to detaining people, instead of pursuing criminals.
“Can any of you know the terror of a father who was taken for no reason other than his appearance?” she asked. “Please support all the recommendations made by the Southold Five.”
Task Force member Carolyn Peabody said she is “grateful we can speak our minds without fear of retribution, and we can disagree, perhaps passionately, and perhaps with indignation, without dehumanizing each other.”
She added that she hopes town police document ICE incidents with their body cameras.
Chief Grattan said police body cameras would be running when they interact with federal immigration actions when asked later by a member of the public.
Task Force member Lily Dougherty-Johnson said her mom lives on the street where one of the raids took place in February, and she “personally feared ‘is my mom gonna get shot by mistake, or on purpose?’ during the raid.
“It’s real to us in Greenport,” she said.
Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski commended Ms. Dougherty-Johnson for reporting to Southold Town Police a suspicious vehicle that turned out to be someone impersonating an immigration officer..
But after Greenport Mayor Kevin Stuessi urged the town to heed the five task force members’ request for more officers in Greenport, which the town attorney had said in his letter was not necessary, Mr. Krupski said he’d “had this discussion with you many times. This town takes police coverage very seriously… If Greenport Village thinks it could do a better job with public safety, they’re more than welcome to have their own police force again.”
The Greenport Village Police Department was disbanded decades ago due to rampant corruption.
Hearing From the Community
After hearing from Task Force and Town Board members for about 45 minutes, the town heard from the public for another 45 minutes. While most in attendance pressed the town to take action, Mattituck Attorney Stephen Kiely, who is running for New York State Assembly this fall against Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni, read aloud a list of crimes he says are committed by undocumented immigrants, including rape and murder.
“Criminal undocumented migrants must be removed. We should seek ICE’s help to remove those people, not pass a law to interfere with them,” said Mr. Kiely. He then urged the Town Board to sue the New York State Legislature over its recent adoption of laws regulating local police cooperation with federal immigration agents.
“Let’s partner with ICE and get the criminal element out of here,” he said.
His comments were met with gasps and anger from the audience, as one person said “they’re the Gestapo!”
Southold resident Glenn McCarty detailed how he believes the OLA law could open up the town to legal challenges, and said its provisions would be better implemented as administrative guidance.
“I don’t personally care whether it’s a law or a resolution,” said Southold Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathryn Casey Quigley, adding that she hopes the town takes action with “clarity and urgency.”
“How are you going to respond when the worst happens and whose side are you going to be on?” she asked.
Greenport Resident Dinni Gordon also highlighted the necessity of trust between residents and local police.
“These random and warrantless immigration arrests have created a climate of fear, and it affects attendance at school and work,” she said.
She added that the daughter of one of the men arrested in February had to visit the Southold Police Department three times and pay $40 to receive a certificate saying her father had not committed any crimes in Southold.
She also said a recent local marine enforcement exercise led to rumors of an immigration action throughout the Greenport community, and urged better public communication about law enforcement exercises.
She said the law would “put the North Fork on notice that Southold Police are committed to the care and protection of the Hispanic community,” and that the law “would reinforce police legitimacy.”
Southold Town Police Captain Scott Latham, who has been on the force for 30 years and served on the Task Force, said near the close of the meeting that he’d heard the word “community” many times that morning.
“As far as the police department is concerned, community is anybody who calls 911. We don’t ask what your background is, what your immigration status is or who you love,” he said. “You call 911 and we are going to show up and treat you with kindness, respect and professionalism. What the feds are going to do, I can’t say. But I want to get out there and say ‘what can I do for you?’ That is the ethos of the Southold Police Department.”
“This can be a rough business,” he added. “Sometimes we don’t have the ability or time to walk around and show people that. But we take it for granted that people understand — it is a wonderful community that we all live in, and it’s not broken down into either/or. We serve the community, whoever calls.”
Sandra Benedetto and Christine Larkin of Greenport both said they were disappointed to not hear reports about the full task force’s recommendations at the meeting, and Ms. Larkin asked what the members who disagreed with the five have recommended.
“There’s gotta be a point where we start acting and taking votes,” said Ms. Benedetto, adding that it has been more than a year since the first ICE raid in Greenport, at the laundromat, and hundreds of people have come to Town Hall asking the town to take action since.
Seth Egan of Greenport, who had circulated a petition asking the town to take action this winter, also asked what was taking the town so long.
“We have concentration camps in this country now,” he said, referring to detention centers being built by the federal government. “This has gone on long enough. People are in real danger.”
Next Steps
“The Task Force was a jumping off point, internally,” said Town Supervisor Al Krupski. “We hear the call for a more organized review of this issue going froward.”
“All of us take this very seriously,” said Councilwoman Anne Smith. “We need to focus on immediate next steps, immediate procedural things we can do.”
Councilwoman Jill Doherty, who served on the Task Force, thanked the community members who served on the Task Force for volunteering their time.
“I appreciate this is such an open community,” said Councilwoman Kate Stevens. “Despite the fear of what might occur, we have seen so many acts of courage…. The entire country is in crisis. We all agree we should be free of fear and people should feel safe. We need to continue to have empathy for one another.”
“I want to thank the people who spoke up for the people who many not feel safe doing so,” said Councilwoman Alexa Suess. “We’re tasked with protecting and serving all in Southold. When 911 is called, there’s simply a response. That is our duty.”
The Town Board is slated to hold another conversation with the Task Force at its 9 a.m. work session in the main Town Hall meeting room on Aug. 11. While the public cannot speak at work sessions, they are welcome to attend.
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