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Local counselor urges Oswego Common Council to oppose ICE activity, urges sanctuary measures
Summary
At the May 12 Oswego Common Council meeting, mental health counselor Kylie Piteres urged the council to condemn U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the area, asked officials to lobby the county and adopt local protections and transparency measures, and presented six specific calls to action.
Kylie Piteres, a mental health counselor at SUNY Oswego speaking on behalf of the grassroots group Organize Oswego, told the Oswego Common Council on May 12 that she and students she counsels are “terrified to leave campus, to get groceries, to go to appointments, to go to pharmacies, and to explore our community.”
Piteres said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is “empowered to violate the rights of people in this country” and that agents have been “harass[ing] community members we care about, love, and rely on, and terrorize families who are simply just trying to exist.”
In a list of six requests presented to the council, Piteres asked local officials to: 1) lobby the county legislature to oppose cooperation with ICE and to restrict Sheriff Don Hilton from cooperating with ICE; 2) issue a public statement condemning ICE actions locally; 3) pass a sanctuary-city resolution to prevent voluntary local support of ICE operations; 4) end city contracts with the county sheriff; 5) report on ICE activity in the area to provide constituents transparency; and 6) create a system for constituents to file complaints about ICE activity.
Piteres framed her remarks as rooted in both local history and current counseling experience. She noted Oswego’s historical role as a refuge during the Holocaust and said, “If these lessons are not applied to the current moment, we have no legacy.” She also said she hears students’ fears directly in counseling sessions.
Another speaker from the gallery, Bailey Smith, described herself as a Jewish resident of Oswego and said she felt “called to speak” in support of Piteres’s point, telling the council they “have an opportunity to speak out and protect the vulnerable.”
No formal council action on Piteres’s requests appears on the published agenda for the May 12 meeting; her remarks were delivered during the public comment portion of the meeting. The council proceeded to roll call and the scheduled agenda after public comment.
