Jefferson County

Governor Kathy Hochul supports the program.

A Jefferson County sheriff's deputy was patrolling near a strip mall in Watertown, 30 miles south of New York's border with Canada last December, when he spotted a Chevrolet cargo van.

He noted three traffic violations, failing to turn on headlights, signaling improperly before making a turn, and driving with cracked glass.

The deputy, Sean Bulger, stopped the vehicle and learned that the driver, a 52-year-old man, was a native of Brazil.

The governor's public statements about the program don't mention immigration enforcement.

In response to New York Focus findings, a spokesperson for Hochul's office said in a statement that the governor will always support local law enforcement in securing our borders and maintaining public safety.

this administration will not aid ice and federal civil immigration enforcement the statement said the spokesperson did not acknowledge that through operation stone garden local police are assisting border patrol like ice part of the department of homeland security with exactly that The federal government paid Jefferson County just over $800 for the 10-hour shift during which a deputy stopped the Brazilian man in Watertown, records show.

The form the deputy completed to document his work that day included fields for number of vehicle stops, penal code violations, and total number of people turned over to Border Patrol.