Sitting across a table from the Schmidt family in Cato, N.Y., Gov. Kathy Hochul found herself in an unfamiliar, and not altogether comfortable, position.
Nearly two weeks earlier, immigration officials had raided the family’s company, Nutrition Bar Confectioners, which manufactures snack bars, and arrested 57 people. The raid — one of the largest in the state since President Trump’s immigration crackdown began — had hobbled the company’s operations.
News of the raid prompted an outcry from immigrant advocates and from Ms. Hochul, the state’s Democratic governor, who last week flew to Cato — a small town in rural Cayuga County, where voters chose Mr. Trump by a 39-point margin in last year’s election — to hear the Schmidt family’s stories, and offer what support she could.
It was not as much as she would have liked.
Ms. Hochul offered to direct the state’s Department of Labor to help find workers to get the company’s lines back up and running, but that would be of little help to the former workers or their families. And while New York had allotted $20 million this year on top of the $30 million already budgeted to help connect immigrants with legal services to fight deportation proceedings, that money wouldn’t protect people from being rounded up in the first place.
In fact, the state itself was left out of the loop: Despite coordinating frequently with federal authorities on gun, drug and human trafficking investigations, Jackie Bray, Ms. Hochul’s commissioner of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, said she learned of the raids after the fact, from advocates and local law enforcement.
Mark Schmidt, 70, who founded the company with his late father in 1978, told Ms. Hochul how deeply the raid had shaken the family. “These people have been part of our community for 10, 20, 30 years. We know them,” he said. “I mean, these families have been pulled apart.”
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The post When ICE Shows Up at a Factory, What Can a Governor Do? appeared first on New York Times.
