A measure known as the Green Light Law is among the most controversial bills being debated during this legislative session in New York. The Green Light Law allows all New Yorkers aged 16 and older to apply for a standard, not-for-federal purposes, non-commercial driver’s license or learner’s permit regardless of citizenship or immigration status in the United States. Under this law, one does not need a Social Security number to apply for a license or permit.
Republicans want to repeal the Green Light Law, which was adopted in 2019. Democrats maintain it’s a help for the immigrant population to lead productive lives and make positive contributions to society in New York state.
Last month, the Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, Tom Homan, visited Albany, flanked by Republicans from the Senate and Assembly, to deliver a message that the Trump administration is coming to the rescue to repeal this law.
“No one should be pushing back on removing public safety threats from their communities,” said Homan, a native of the North Country village of West Carthage, in Jefferson County. “What this Green Light Law does is put your community at risk. If we can’t arrest the bad guy, if we don’t have information about the bad guy, if we can’t have data to help us support a criminal investigation – then the community is at risk…This is my home and always will be. I’ll do everything I can to protect it. We’re going to fix it, and I won’t stop until the northern border is as tight as the southern border.”
Assemblyman Scott Gray (R – Carthage, Jefferson County) grew up with and went to public school with Homan. Gray has been critical of the Hochul administration and says Democrats are sending conflicting messages. “They [The Democrats] are soft on crime but yet they tell you they are concerned about public safety,” he said. “We fire 2,000 correction officers at the same time we have a website up that reads ‘New York Helps: Looking for employment.’ That is the hypocrisy of one-party rule in Albany.”
The North Country state senator, Dan Stec (R – Queensbury, Warren County), also took aim at the lackadaisical attitude of the Hochul administration. “People on the northern border are terrified. I have been on the northern border many times with all my sheriffs and with the border patrol. Last year, more illegal crossings on the Canadian border occurred in the Swanton sector, which runs from New Hampshire to Watertown than the rest of the Canadian border combined,” Stec said. “People are flooding in. They are predominantly coming in, according to my briefings from border patrol, from Bangladesh [and] India, so they’re not walking here and not swimming here. They’re flying in airplanes, landing in airports. They’re already in a captured environment as far as you have to go through a border to get here.
“Once they get off the plane, they start making their way south. More than any other sector on the border, they are crossing through my district to go to New York City because Kathy Hochul and the Democrats turn on the big magnet and say come here, we’ll protect you,” he continued. “We’ll give you free food. You can step over the homeless veterans on your way to your free housing. We’ll give you the free cell phones and $1,000 a month EBT cards. That is the insanity of Kathy Hochul’s Albany. She has done nothing to change it. She has emergency authorities, as we all learned from Covid, to waive any law. She hasn’t lifted a finger to do anything with the Green Light Law.”
Homan said an open border hurts national security and leads to increased crime. “You can’t have strong national security without border security. He [Trump] did in three weeks what Joe Biden couldn’t do in four years,” he said. “The border numbers right now are down 96 percent. That means…less women are being raped by the cartels, less children are dying making that journey, less Americans are dying from Fentanyl that comes across the northern border, less women and children are sex-trafficked, less terrorists are getting into this country. President Trump promised the biggest deportation operation in the history of our nation. That’s the right thing to do.
“Ninety percent of those who come to our border claiming asylum wind up with an order of removal after due process. If we don’t execute those orders, then what…are we doing? Let’s be clear: President Trump is committed and [I’m] committed that we’re focusing on public safety threats and national security threats,” Homan concluded.
When it comes to entering New York prisons, Hochul appears to have set up roadblocks for ICE agents to be stymied.
Homan said, “Let me give a shout out to Mayor [Eric] Adams. Like him or love him. The mere fact that he wants to get us into Rikers Island to talk to illegal aliens who committed a crime against a citizen is commendable. Then the governor runs down there [to New York City] to fire him because he’s working with Tom Homan? He wants to be a law-and-order mayor. At the same time, she says she wants the Green Light law, which prevents ICE and CBP [Customs and Border Protection], who again are focusing on national security threats and public safety threats and you can’t access the DMV data? You’re going to prevent these officers from obtaining DMV information that’s going to help drive a criminal investigation on a national security, public safety threat. [Hochul’s] chief of staff tells me the border czar should know they can get that [information] with a warrant. Really? Does the FBI need a warrant? Does the DA need a warrant? Do the U.S. Marshals need a warrant? You’re going to deny information no matter how bad this person is? One of the first things any cop does is run DMV data to get more information about who this person is. You’re going to require a warrant for them and no other federal law enforcement agency? Ridiculous. She’s talking out of both sides of her mouth. This is an attack on immigration enforcement that is plain as to what it is.”
To make matters more complicated, there is the Akwesasne Indian Reservation, a sovereign territory belonging to the Mohawk Indians that straddles the U.S.-Canada border. This land has always been a refuge for drug smuggling and a way for illegal aliens to gain access to either country.
“That’s one of the subjects I talked with Canada about,” Homan told The Jewish Press. “I grew up there. I know what happens there. Canada also realizes it’s an issue, so we’re working on a plan to deal with it,” he said, but would not provide details of the because of the sensitive nature of law enforcement strategies.
With Homan in the Capitol building, Democrats hastily rallied together, leaving debates behind in the Senate and Assembly chambers to show their disdain toward the Trump administration and Homan in particular.
“The last person we are going to take advice from on how to handle these difficult issues is someone like Tom Homan who associates with known racists like the Proud Boys,” said Deputy Senate Majority Leader Michael Gianaris (D – Astoria, Queens).
“Don’t listen to the racism because that’s what this is,” Gianaris said. “They will try to demonize one or two examples and take down thousands of others who are not at fault. They want to sow division and they want to sow hate.”
Turning to the Green Light law, the sponsor of the bill for the Democrats also spewed hatred toward the Republicans. “Look at the difference between the people who are here and the people who were downstairs [the Republicans]. This is what America is about. Downstairs was about xenophobia, white racism, white supremacy. All of us here are going to fight against that with every breath we have in our bodies,” said Senator Luis Sepulveda (D – West Farms, The Bronx). “Undocumented immigrants commit considerably less crime in this state. It is not lost upon me that the guy leading the Fascist movement in this country has been convicted of 34 felonies and civilly raping a woman.”
Many Jewish lawmakers spoke out about favoring an immigrants’ rights agenda.
“They are committed as every generation of immigrants has been. Every wave that has come here with a hope and a dream of being Americans. In my mind they are Americans,” said Assemblywoman Deborah Glick (D – Greenwich Village, Manhattan). “They are my friends and my neighbors. We are here to say we are not going to be divided.
“Not everybody pays attention to history. People in my family pay attention to history because we have seen this before. It is pernicious. It is cruel and it goes to the basic instincts of other people who are stressed, struggling, and who are receptive to a notion that the reason they have problems is because of someone else,” Glick said. “It is vile and it is thoroughly anti-American. I’m here to stand with my colleagues to say not on our watch.”
An assemblywoman from the Upper West Side of Manhattan also spewed fighting words. “My mother and my grandmother escaped the Nazis to come to New York City. I would not be standing here if New York did not accept them. The same is true for so many of us, no matter our religion, our color, our creed. We’re all in this together,” said 19-year veteran Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal. “Tom Homan is really a coward. Are you afraid of the governor? To my colleagues who are Republican, who secretly say to me this is bad: Grow a spine.”
She also took aim at Washington Republicans. “Don’t be a coward the way the Republicans in the House of Representatives are. They are cowards. They don’t stand for anything. They’re scared when the bully-in-chief bullies them. You have no values. You have no worth. We here in New York have worth because we are together in all corners of the state. We are the armor for our immigrant people. We will not move away.
“Tom Homan said, ‘You’re not going to stop us, New York state. If you don’t get out of the way, we’re going to do our job.’ Well, we will do our job. We represent immigrants. We represent their families. We represent all of New York state. You’re going to have to get by us in order to do your perverted, vindictive actions. We will not stand idly by. We will continue the fight,” Rosenthal concluded.
Another Jewish lawmaker brought up her European ancestry. “My mother and grandparents came out of Nazi Germany in hiding. They came here to seek a better life. That Jewish star that Jews had to wear during the Holocaust is just an example of what we are doing by sending our immigrant population into hiding because they cannot feel free,” said Assemblywoman Dana Levenberg (D – Ossining, Westchester County). “They cannot feel they can be here in public without feeling a threat to their lives. Children are in fear. Parents are in fear. Children are not going to school. We need an educated population. Let’s not scapegoat people who do not deserve to be scapegoated. Let us make sure that we lead with love and we continue to build up our fantastic New York state.”
Also speaking out was Assemblyman Harvey Epstein (D – East Village, Manhattan). “This is an immigrant state. We are going to support our immigrants. When they’re coming for one of us, they say they’re coming for all of us and we’re clear,” said. “We are here for our New Yorkers. We are going to fight for our New Yorkers. We’re going to stand every single day and ignore their chaos, make sure we’re going to fight for our values because that’s what New Yorkers do.”
A suburban Jewish lawmaker had harsh words for Homan. “When I saw that Tom Homan had the nerve to come into our building, my heart just sunk. Look at the group who is here today – these people who represent every community. I know he [Homan] thinks he’s from New York. He’s not from our New York. He’s not from our communities. He’s not from the suburbs. He’s not from the rural communities and [certainly] not from the cities of New York,” said Senator Shelley Mayer (D – Yonkers, Westchester County).
“Shame on our Republican colleagues. Shame on them for standing with him and not standing here,” Mayer continued. “They represent these communities too. They represent the City of New York, the suburbs, the rural communities, upstate cities; they know who is at risk here. They should not be standing with him. Shame on them…We are not going to be bullied, we are not going to be in fear, we are going to stand together…New York is a community of immigrants and we’re not backing down.”
Another Jewish lawmaker compared targeted illegal immigrants with Jews coming to America from Europe during a different era. “My grandparents and great-grandparents came as they were escaping pogroms in Eastern Europe and later on Nazis in Germany,” said Senator Liz Krueger (D – Midtown Manhattan). “They just came here to save their lives and hope for better for their families and build those families and build America. That’s how I got here to the New York State Senate. I am the grandchild of people who were undocumented. Every one of us has the same story.”
A Jewish lawmaker who represents the Finger Lakes region took aim at the Trump administration. “What we are seeing with this administration is the commitment to recreate reality in their own image. We cannot let them. We are saying no. We are demanding that the public hear the truth,” said Assemblywoman Anna Kelles (D – Ithaca, Tompkins County). “The truth is during his last administration, we saw an increased rate of suicide among farmers because they were losing their workers. When they say we need to remove immigrants from our communities because they’re taking our jobs, we know that is a lie. Not a single person stepped in to fill a single one of those jobs because they didn’t want them.”
The only formerly undocumented lawmaker in Albany came to the United States in 2001 from Medellín, Colombia, with her mother on a six-month tourist visa. Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz (D – Jackson Heights, Queens) is the first Colombian-American to represent her Queens district and only the third DREAMer to serve in an elected position in the United States. After coming to the U.S., Cruz remained in Queens for 10 years before becoming a citizen. She attended the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where she received a Bachelor of Science in forensic psychology, and earned her law degree from CUNY.
For her, Homan is enemy number one. “There is probably nothing we can do for the day they come for one of us. I used to be undocumented. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day they tried to strip me of my citizenship,” Cruz said. “There is nothing we can do, but that doesn’t mean we give up hope. That doesn’t mean we sit down and do nothing. We may not be able to stop the deportation of one family, but we can help ten others by making sure that we pass the New York for All Act, the Access to Representation Act, and the Dignity, Not Detention Act.”
There was no mention at the demonstration of amending the Green Light Law. It seemed as though the Democrats seized the moment of Homan’s appearance to vent their feelings about immigration with no interest in wanting to even tweak the system. There seemed to be more hostility from New York Democrats toward Republicans than few have seen in a century.
