CANTON — The St. Lawrence County Board of Legislators on Monday night heard five hours of comments from a record crowd prior to voting in favor of the St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office entering into a controversial 287g agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The vote was largely along party lines. Those in support were all Republicans: James Reagen, David Forsythe, Joseph Lightfoot, William Sheridan, Harry Smithers, Larry Denesha, Rick Perkins, Benjamin Hull, Glenn Webster, John Gennett and Rita Curran.

Democratic legislators Margaret Haggard, Nicole Terminelli and Anthony Levato, along with Republican John Burke, voted against the measure. Burke voted for the resolution in committee, but switched his vote after hearing from constituents.

There were about 80 people who spoke and 88 comments submitted through the county website that were read aloud. Nearly all of the speakers were against the resolution, with about five arguing in favor of it. Of the 88 comments, two supported it with the rest opposed to it passing or urging the legislators to table it. Two comments talked about county issues unrelated to the 287g agreement.

More than 300 people showed up, with some 200 packing courtroom C, the largest public gallery in the St. Lawrence County Courthouse, to standing room only. About 100 other people watched a livestream of the meeting in an overflow room.

A rotating crowd of more than 200 people protested outside the courthouse on both sides of Court Street prior to the meeting being convened at 6 p.m. The group chanted phrases like, “ICE has no business here. No hate. No fear,” while holding signs calling for the agency to be abolished and for legislators to vote against the agreement.

Once the meeting opened, public comment speakers believed that entering into even a limited agreement with ICE, which the legislators later approved, is the first step on a ladder that eventually will lead ICE to have a regular presence in St. Lawrence County. Residents voiced a wide array of concerns that included racial profiling, county financial liability, human rights violations, constitutional violations, public fear, general harm, reduced economic contributions of undocumented workers and the erosion of public trust in local law enforcement.

Other concerns were that the 287g may open the door to immigration authorities targeting college students and professors from overseas. Tensions elevated on the SUNY Potsdam campus on Tuesday when a Border Patrol traffic stop initiated off campus and unrelated to the campus ended in a SUNY Potsdam parking lot. Federal agents left after taking at least one person into custody from the vehicle they stopped.

Sheriff Patrick “Rick” Engle, speaking Monday night after public comment and prior to the legislators’ vote, said the ratified 287g resolution won’t lead to an increased ICE presence in the county or deputies enforcing immigration laws.

“We will not pull people off the street,” Engle said. He went on to say that he sees the 287g agreement as the best way to keep criminals from going from jail to the streets and ensure public safety for all county residents. Those who spoke against the resolution said they believe it will have the opposite effect making the majority of people feel unsafe because of it.

Public scrutiny of the 287g agreement, so called for its section in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, has grown over the last month, after immigration agents shot and killed two people in Minnesota and ICE continues operations in communities across the country.

County legislators later passed the 287g resolution, binding the sheriff’s office to the jail enforcement model. That’s where a law enforcement agency is granted access to a federal database to check people for federal warrants, including administrative immigration warrants, when they’re remanded to jail. Remanded means the person has been charged with a crime and been arraigned by a judge who orders them held in jail, pending further court action. Bail may or may not be set, depending on the case and the defendant’s criminal history, among other factors.

The warrant service model is when ICE trains and authorizes local, county or state officers and authorizes them to execute ICE administrative warrants in jails. The task force model is the deepest level of partnership, where officers are authorized to enforce immigration laws under ICE oversight. Those two were mentioned in the committee’s draft resolution, but were amended out of the final resolution.

Public comment speakers included people who are immigrants and others who have loved ones who are from overseas. Members of the Akwesasne community also spoke and said an agreement with ICE in a neighboring community would lead to further federal law enforcement presence in their “already over-policed” community.

There have been recent reports that U.S. Border Patrol is pulling over Akwesasne Mohawks traveling between the American and Canadian sides of their own territory using that alone as the basis of the stop.

Raamitha Pillay is an immigrant who lives in St. Lawrence County as a legal American citizen. She is brown skinned and was born in apartheid South Africa. She said that during the naturalization process, “the immigration officer said welcome home. This is a special moment … because this is my home.”

“For the last year, I haven’t felt safe in my home. I’ve felt afraid,” she said. “You cannot have a quota for immigrants being deported,” referring to the Trump administration’s goal of detaining 3,000 immigrants per day.

“Citizens are also being deported, and I know white citizens are also being killed. I don’t feel safe. My friends don’t feel safe,” she said. “What am I going to do if an ICE officer shows up? What if an ICE person comes to me? What if, as the sheriff goes into this agreement, they come for me?”

Two people from Akwesasne, Dana Lee Thompson and Fallon Jacobs, said those who support ICE fail to recognize that their ancestors were the original immigrants to Native land, and that today’s immigration enforcement feels like an extension of centuries of genocide carried out against Native peoples.

“Where we are having this meeting tonight is in our homelands,” Thompson said. “We fed you. We taught you many things. As time went on, you turned your back on us.”

“All the people that came across the waters, they’re immigrants, in that sense, if you look out at a historical perspective,” she said. “You were allowed to stay in our country … We don’t live too far and we’re already racially profiled.”

She said those who support the agreement “don’t know about fear. Our people do, for the last 500 years.”

“You have to open your heart and your mind and you have to think,” Thompson said. “You have a mind and a heart, and they don’t work properly if they’re not connected.”

Jacobs said she’s “experiencing something way too close to home regarding ICE.”

“I feel like I’m at Sullivan’s campaign,” she said.

Sullivan’s campaign was a genocide ordered by George Washington in 1779 during the Revolutionary War.

Under command of Maj. Gen. John Sullivan, American forces attacked four Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations allied with the British. The raids leveled their villages, razed their crops, and destroyed their food stores. It resulted in thousands of Native survivors fleeing to seek British protection, depopulating their land, which opened it up to European colonizers.

“We the people. You just need to keep that in your heart,” Jacobs said.

Canton resident Mike Gagliardi, who is Jewish, said he recognizes parallels between ICE and the Nazi gestapo.

“The first thing you learned in Hebrew school is never again. Not just for us Jews, but for everyone,” he said. “These actions look a lot to me like the actions of the gestapo, that I was taught never again and to rebel against.”

“You’re unleashing something that can’t be undone,” he said.

Anna Ladouceur of Canton asked the legislators to table the 287g resolution until they’ve each had the opportunity to hear directly from their respective constituents. She is white and has a Taiwanese boyfriend who left the country after President Donald J. Trump ordered an unprecedented immigration crackdown nationwide.

She said an incident that factored into her partner’s decision to leave the country was what they felt was unnecessary scrutiny at the border while returning from a trip to Ottawa. She said they were detained at the border despite having all of his legal paperwork. She said after an immigration agent checked the papers and found everything in order, they weren’t allowed to leave because a second agent wanted to run them again, apparently unsatisfied with the first agent’s screening.

“Voting yes will ensure this humiliation ritual is commonplace,” Ladouceur said. She said if the legislators have difficulty seeing things from immigrants’ perspective, “think of me, an American, who has lost someone they love dearly because of this system.”

All of the speakers who argued against the 287g received loud rounds of applause after speaking.

The five or so people who spoke in favor of the sheriff entering into a 287g said they support it because they see the nationwide immigration crackdown as only going after “the worst of the worst” — murderers, sex offenders, drug dealers. Engle made similar comments later in the meeting, as did several legislators who debated before voting yes on the resolution.

St. Lawrence County resident Bill Frank said he thinks Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, the two American citizens shot and killed by Department of Homeland Security agents in Minneapolis, would still be alive if local police there had a 287g.

He went on to say mainstream media is disingenuously acting as “color revolutionists” while reporting on their deaths, without explaining what he meant by that. He added that he feels civil rights are not in jeopardy because Engle has taken an oath to defend the Constitution, and “the sheriff keeps that oath.” About four people clapped after Frank finished at the podium.

The Eurasia Review in an article at http://wdt.me/Dr6mqg says, “color revolutions are political term used to describe turbulent political events: mass street protests and riots in order to achieve a revolutionary change of government. Some revolutionary upheavals are successful and some remain only attempts. However, so far they have taken place in a number of countries at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.”

When the meeting went over to the legislators around 11 p.m., they spent an hour amending and debating the 287g resolution.

Legislators moved the original resolution during an Operations Committee meeting on Jan. 12, approving it 12-2 along party lines to go in front of the board for a final vote on Monday night.

Part of the controversy was that resolution did not specify which of three 287g models the sheriff’s office would pursue. The draft resolution contained two different clauses referencing all three 287g models without saying which will be implemented. The legislators amended the draft resolution to specify it’s only for the jail enforcement model. A second successful amendment to the resolution mandates that the sheriff’s office review the program for its efficacy and impact after a year.

Legislators asked for guidance from County Attorney Stephen D. Button prior to moving and voting on the two amendments.

Two separate motions to table the resolution failed 11-4, with the same yes and no votes as the final resolution.

People in the crowd shouted their opposition at legislators during their debate, which led to one person in the audience, which had dwindled to about 50, being ejected from the meeting. Legislators in response shouted back that they sat quietly and listened to five hours of public comments and they should be given the same courtesy during their debate.

Republican Legislator Harry Smithers, who voted yes, said that after listening to public comments, “I feel there’s room for compromise on many issues.” He said he doesn’t think legislators should interfere with law enforcement who are “doing their duty.”

“The sheriff’s office has been very upfront,” Smithers said. “It’s kind of mind boggling to me to think that our sheriff or other law enforcement people will be changed into something else by a few hours or days of training by federal agents.”

Democratic legislator Anthony Levato, who voted no, said he’s concerned how the 287g will “impact the perception of our sheriff’s department.”

“I do have serious concerns about what the impact of that changed perception would be,” he said.

“It will have a compounding … economic impact by the effect it will have on our hospitals, our colleges, and our tourism,” he said. “I will be choosing to listen to a pretty good amount of citizens who have reached out to us and spoken here.”

After the 287g vote around midnight, the legislators held a recess before continuing to the rest of the agenda, which was a stack of paper about a quarter of an inch thick. Audience members shouted at the legislators, “Disgusting! You are disgusting people!”

“Don’t be a baby!” Republican Legislator Glenn Webster shouted back.

“Shame!” an audience member yelled.

“Baaahhh!” Webster yelled back.