NEW YORK — New York state is creating a team of legal observers who will monitor and record the activities of federal immigration enforcement officers as the Trump administration pursues expanded deportation efforts, the state’s attorney general announced on Tuesday.
Attorney General Letitia James said the observers will be volunteer employees from her office, trained to observe — without interfering — whether immigration enforcement actions remain within the bounds of the law. The observers will be identifiable by purple vests.
The initiative follows weeks of unrest in Minneapolis, where President Donald Trump has deployed thousands of armed, masked federal agents as part of an aggressive effort to deport migrants. The administration has said the campaign aims to remove more migrants than under any previous president.
“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 said in a statement. “We have seen in Minnesota how quickly and tragically federal operations can escalate in the absence of transparency and accountability.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which enforces immigration law, did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump, a Republican, has focused his most forceful immigration enforcement actions on states led by Democratic governors, including California, Illinois, and Minnesota. While New York hosts one of the largest and busiest DHS field offices in the country, the administration has not announced a major enforcement surge there.
Trump has linked deportations — including of some migrants who were legally admitted into the United States — to crime reduction, though crime data has frequently contradicted that claim.
In Minneapolis, residents have staged protests, blowing whistles and filming immigration agents operating in military-style gear. In two separate incidents in January, federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — who were protesting or observing enforcement actions.
Minnesota officials have accused the Trump administration of violating constitutional rights, including the rights of both migrants and U.S. citizens to observe and protest government activity.
In New York, legal observers have long been present at protests, often affiliated with groups such as the National Lawyers Guild, monitoring whether law enforcement violates free speech protections. However, a coordinated, state-run effort to observe federal immigration operations appears to be unprecedented.
James, a long-time critic of Trump who previously won a civil fraud case against him and his real estate company, said information collected by the observers would be used to determine whether legal challenges should be brought.
The observers’ role will be limited to documentation and observation, not intervention, according to her office.
