Trump's plan to deport criminals: Tom Suozzi, Laura Gillen back the idea, but offer advice on enforcement

WASHINGTON — In 2007, then-Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi barred federal immigration agents from the county after their raids seeking gang members here illegally — conducted without local police — also barged into homes of innocent U.S. citizens.

As President-elect Donald Trump calls for mass deportations of criminals without legal U.S. immigration status, now-U. S. Rep. Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) has offered support for those raids — but also advice.

"It’s really important that this is coordinated at the local level," Suozzi told Newsday. "I think that corrections, jails, maybe even probation and parole should play a very heavy role in coordinating with the federal government."

Just days before Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration, many Democrats last week backed a Republican bill that would expand the required deportation of people living in the country illegally who are accused of lesser theft crimes like shoplifting, and would give states the right to sue the Homeland Security secretary for immigration enforcement failures.

Suozzi and first-term Rep. Laura Gillen (D-Rockville Centre) joined 46 other House Democrats — as well as Long Island Republican Reps. Andrew Garbarino of Bayport and Nick LaLota of Amityville — in voting for the Laken Riley Act, and 32 Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to take that bill up for debate.

'Get the criminals out'

Trump has said that after his inauguration he will declare a national emergency and issue executive orders to shut down the border and begin deportations. At a rally at Madison Square Garden in the closing days of the presidential race, he declared, "On Day One, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out."

But he has not said exactly what those orders will entail, other than an initial focus on public safety and national security threats.

Republicans successfully made a crackdown on the flow of noncitizens across the border a winning political issue for Trump and Republicans in Congress. Garbarino and LaLota, like most Republicans, declined to discuss Trump’s deportation plans.

Suozzi and Gillen both told Newsday last month that they back efforts to remove criminal noncitizens, but have concerns about how it will happen.

Over the past year, Democrats have backed tougher border and immigration policies promoted by Suozzi, who won a special election in February after talking about the need for a secure border and tough immigration enforcement while treating migrants humanely.

"Democrats have consistently supported robust border security and the enforcement of our laws — including immigration enforcement," said Debu Gandhi, senior director at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a Democratic-linked advocacy group.

"We keep on hearing over and over again that their focus is going to be on deporting criminals first, right?" Suozzi said. "And I'm 100% supportive of that, OK? And I will work with the administration to accomplish that and to work on keeping our community safe."

Need for training

But Suozzi’s experience with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids nearly two decades ago shapes his advice to the incoming Trump administration.

"I've been in government long enough to know that government doesn't always do things well. Sometimes they make mistakes," Suozzi told Newsday recently in an interview.

"If untrained federal officials come knock down the door of a house where a criminal used to live and now a family that has nothing to do with criminality is living there, well, that's going to hurt their reputation tremendously," he said.

He urged proper training of new immigration agents and close coordination between them and local law enforcement to make sure that the deportation raids hit the right targets.

Gillen also said she supports tougher enforcement.

"We need to reform our immigration system. We need to reform our asylum system. We need to secure our border," Gillen said. "We need to make sure that people who come here illegally and commit crimes are not permitted to stay here."

But she said she also is concerned about her constituents who are here on temporary protected status, known as TPS — many of them Haitians, whose TPS status ends in 2026.

"We have a large Haitian community in my district," she said. "The situation in Haiti is extraordinarily dangerous and violent. And I want to make sure that the people who have come here lawfully are able to stay here."