Oswego County Cops Called Border Patrol on Drivers

A version of this story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.

A sheriff’s deputy in Oswego County pulled over a driver one afternoon in January 2025. The driver and his passenger only spoke Spanish. So the deputy took the driver’s phone, which had a photo of the driver’s Ecuadorian passport on it, went back to his patrol car, and called up an acquaintance.

That acquaintance: a United States Border Patrol agent.

“They say they speak zero English. I can never know if they’re telling the truth,” the deputy, who identified himself as officer Taylor, told the Border Patrol agent, whom he called Bell. Taylor read the man’s information, including his passport number, over the phone.

“I got nothing on that passport number,” the Border Patrol agent said. “That could mean that he hasn’t come in through the border.”

“Does that mean you should send somebody down here?” Taylor asked.

Before hanging up, Taylor volunteered to get identifying information about the passenger as well. While he waited for Border Patrol to arrive, he wrote the driver a ticket.

Half an hour later, a handful of Border Patrol agents arrived and arrested the men.

The case is not unique. Between January and September last year, officers from the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office called Border Patrol at least a dozen times while holding drivers at traffic stops — potential violations of state law — body-worn camera footage obtained through a public records request shows.

The hours of footage show that deputies called Border Patrol after pulling over non-English-speaking drivers, resulting in immigration agents arresting at least eight people. (In some instances, agents weren’t available to drive to the scene.)

The videos surface as lawmakers in Albany debate whether and how local law enforcement should be allowed to engage with federal immigration enforcement.

They also come amid a state attorney general investigation into the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office’s collaboration with immigration authorities. Last June, following reports that the office was patrolling alongside Border Patrol and calling agents in for traffic stops, the New York Post reported that Attorney General Letitia James’s office asked Oswego County Sheriff Don Hilton for records of communications between his office and immigration enforcement agencies. Reached for comment, the attorney general’s office said the investigation is ongoing. (It’s worth noting that Hilton was warned by federal authorities in 2021 after deputies flew a Trump 2020 flag from a department-owned boat — a sanction that stemmed from a possible violation of the Hatch Act for politicizing his office.)

The Oswego County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails requesting comment.

As it stands, there are few statewide policies in New York that restrict local police from collaborating with federal immigration agents. However, a state appellate court ruled in 2018 that local cops can’t detain people for civil immigration offenses without a warrant. That includes situations where police extend a traffic stop until immigration agents arrive, Attorney General James explained in a 2020 policy guidance.

Last year, New York Focus reported that local police in Cheektowaga, outside of Buffalo, had called Border Patrol on people suspected of crimes, like shoplifting, or traffic violations, sometimes holding them until agents arrived to review their documentation, after which they often arrested them for immigration violations. In the wake of that reporting, the Cheektowaga Police Department reviewed its practices and retrained its officers on immigration enforcement policies.

The Oswego County body camera videos show sheriff’s deputies holding people at traffic stops far longer than they needed to issue them tickets, sometimes waiting as long as 45 minutes for Border Patrol agents to arrive to make an arrest.

“If a person is encountering the police and they otherwise should be free to go, the police cannot hold them longer than that,” said Ify Chikezie, a staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Being a person of color, being a person that speaks Spanish, being a day laborer, none of these actions are unlawful.”

Jennifer Connor, executive director of Justice for Migrant Families in Buffalo, said that, over the past year and a half, she’s heard an increasing number of complaints of police in towns near the Canadian border calling Border Patrol on drivers, often under the guise of needing translation services.

“Translation has always been a thinly veiled pretense to call immigration in a situation that does not warrant it,” Connor said.

Taylor, the Oswego sheriff’s deputy, expressed no qualms about holding the car, which he pulled over in the town of Hastings, for immigration enforcement. At one point in the body camera video, another officer asks if Taylor called Border Patrol because he needs a translator and suggests instead calling US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which could translate over the phone.

“No, I am waiting because I don’t think they’re supposed to be here,” Taylor responded. On a separate call, the Border Patrol agent informed Taylor that his colleagues were 35 minutes away. “I’ll just be sitting here, holding them,” Taylor said.

At other points in the video, which is one of the few obtained by New York Focus that doesn’t contain significant gaps, Taylor expresses disdain for immigrants.

“You should be forced to speak English when you come here,” he said. “We couldn’t even force them to get the Covid shot, but we could force our own people.”

Zach Ahmad, senior policy counsel at the NYCLU, argued that the video highlights the need to rein in police collaboration with immigration authorities.

“Local police departments maintain incredibly close working relationships with ICE and CBP officers and will go out of their way to funnel immigrant New Yorkers into the deportation pipeline,” he said.

Gov. Hochul has advocated for only banning formal agreements between ICE and local police. But immigrant rights advocates note that much local collusion with immigration enforcement happens informally, without a written agreement. Oswego County, for instance, doesn’t have a formal agreement with ICE.

Spurred by advocates, progressive legislators have pushed to pass the New York for All Act, a sweeping sanctuary bill that would ban even informal cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents unless the agents provide judicial warrants.

“Unless Albany takes real, meaningful action to prohibit collusion between law enforcement and immigration authorities by passing the New York for All Act, this type of dangerous behavior will only continue across New York,” said Ahmad.

Negotiations in Albany over a compromise immigration deal recently stalled. The result of that debate will determine how departments like the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office are allowed to interact with federal authorities.

With his body camera activated, Taylor expressed negative opinions about Hochul’s stance on immigration. Referencing the state’s policy of denying federal immigration authorities direct access to Department of Motor Vehicle records — which predates Hochul’s administration — he called the governor a pejorative for intellectually disabled people.

Later in the video, Taylor asked the Border Patrol agent if he should issue the driver a ticket, to which the agent replied yes. “We like having a ticket so that it shows there was a legitimate reason for running into them,” the agent said.

Taylor told him to stay on the line while he wrote the ticket.

“I’m going to write, ‘Address: America,’” he joked.