Suffolk County apprehends 18 shoplifters; toxic plume in East Hampton leads to questions regarding battery energy storage facility; and more East End news

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to flood New York City with more ICE agents since Gov. Kathy Hochul has signed legislation that will stymie the department’s efforts, the White House border czar said yesterday.Hochul told Newsday that the move would be "wildly disruptive" to the nation's economic capital and that "Americans have had enough with the overreach of ICE."On Long Island, immigration advocates said they feared a stepped-up U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement campaign in the city could spill over to Nassau and Suffolk counties, and they expect any surge to be met with resistance.Speaking on Fox News, Tom Homan said he will fulfill a “promise" he made to Hochul that if the legislation passed, he would send more agents to the city. “I made her a promise," Homan said on “Fox and Friends." “You’re gonna see more ICE agents [than] you’ve ever seen in New York City. And it's coming." “I just reviewed an operational plan," he added. “I'm not gonna tell you exactly when it's gonna happen, but it's coming. I'm keeping my promise. We're gonna send more ICE agents to New York because you took away the efficiencies of safe arrests in county jails."He has previously said he will “flood the zone" in New York City.Bart Jones reports in NEWSDAY that Hochul in late May signed legislation that bars ICE agents from wearing masks and keeps immigration agents out of sensitive locations such as churches and schools unless they have a warrant.The legislation also bars local governments from entering into 287(g) agreements that allow them to deputize local police as ICE agents and allows ICE to use local jails to hold detained migrants.On Monday, Hochul said President Donald Trump had promised her he will not send a surge of ICE agents into areas unless local officials ask for it."I'm not asking now - that'll never happen, because they saw what happened to Minneapolis...I would think that the president, the former New Yorker, would understand, we want to all keep the city safe. It is the economic engine of the country, so that'll be wildly disruptive" if he sends a surge of ICE agents, Hochul said.Minerva Perez, executive director of Organización Latino Americana {OLA} an East End immigration advocacy group, said yesterday she fears an uptick in ICE agents in New York City will spread to Long Island.“We already know there are outposts on Long Island. We already know that there are processing centers on Long Island," Perez said, adding that any surge in agents is likely "going to spill over to Long Island."Hochul said New York will help arrest real criminals but not immigrants without criminal records. "New York State is not a sanctuary state for criminals," she said. "In New York, our local police need to be focused on local crimes and not filling up our jails with people who ICE has taken off our streets, out of our schools, out of our pizzerias, out of our homes, and I'm not going to be part of that," she said. "We're not going to be helping with civil immigration enforcement."***The Riverhead Town Board will hold a special meeting tomorrow evening for a public hearing on the proposed Peconic River Hotel, a five-story, 94-room hotel planned for East Main Street in Riverhead as part of the downtown town square project.Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that the hearing, scheduled for Wednesday June 10 at 6 p.m. in Town Hall, concerns the site plan and special permit applications filed by J. Petrocelli Riverhead Town Square LLC, the town’s designated master developer for the town square project. The meeting was called solely for the hearing.The purpose of the hearing is to allow the Riverhead Town Board to review the hotel site plan and special permit application, hear from the applicant, receive comments from town staff and outside agencies, and take public comment before deciding whether to approve, deny or modify the applications.The hotel is proposed for 117-127 E. Main St., on the south side of Main Street in Riverhead next to the planned town square and the East End Arts campus. The property is in the Downtown Center 1: Main Street zoning district, where hotels are allowed by special permit from the Riverhead Town Board.***The Suffolk County Police Department will hold a vehicle auction this coming Saturday, June 13, at its impound facility in Westhampton.The auction, hosted by the department’s Impound Section, will begin at 9 a.m. at 100 Old Country Road.Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that approximately 90 lots will be auctioned, including sedans and SUVs, according to police. All vehicles will have a minimum bid of $500 and will be sold as-is.Vehicles may be previewed Thursday, June 11, and Friday, June 12, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the impound yard in Westhampton. Vehicles will also be available for preview for one hour before the auction begins Saturday.Vehicle documents for the auction can also be viewed at the Suffolk County Police website and conditions are available at suffolkpd.org under “Impound Section” and “Vehicle Auctions.”***As Jor’Dynn Duncan racked up 40 absences in the final six months of last school term, Bayport-Blue Point school district officials heard several excuses.The little girl was sick. A family member had died. She was on a family vacation to Disney World. All those reasons turned out to be false, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.Payton Guion reports in NEWSDAY that in May 2025 alone, Jor’Dynn missed nearly the entire month of school, prosecutors said. Seven months later, she was dead at age 7. Her guardian, Emily Kelly, now stands accused of torturing and killing her, with Kelly’s mother and daughter also facing charges.The case exposes a gap in the State of New York’s approach to chronic absenteeism: Schools must track attendance and report suspected educational neglect, but there is no automatic requirement to notify child welfare agencies when a young child misses a specific number of days. That leaves districts with broad discretion, even in extreme cases.The lack of formal reporting requirements is part of a larger, statewide effort to keep kids in homes and out of the child welfare system, advocates and state officials said. But some education officials and lawmakers have expressed concerns that the lack of coordination between schools and child welfare agencies means some children may be missed by the systems meant to protect them."Especially in this case, looking at how many days this child missed school, it’s an indication that something was going on," said Suffolk Legis. Greg Doroski (D-Mattituck), who sits on the legislature’s Public Safety Committee. "And I think it should be, going forward, a clear case where there should be some more formal guidelines."The state’s vague guidance — and preference for school district autonomy — has led to a patchwork of policies across the state, according to Sen. James Skoufis (D-Cornwall), who introduced legislation regarding student attendance this past session.Currently, Skoufis said, when it comes to students who miss days upon days of class, school policies around New York are "all over the map."Newsday reported last month that 17.3% of public school students on Long Island were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, meaning they missed 18 or more school days.That’s down from recent years but well above the pre-pandemic level of 11.4% in 2018-19.In the Bayport-Blue Point district, where Jor’Dynn Duncan attended school, 14.3% of students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, up from 13.6% the previous year.***As state and local officials scramble to understand and limit the impact of a toxic plume discovered near a utility battery-storage plant in East Hampton, new questions are being raised about the state’s oversight of the plant following a 2023 thermal-runaway fire that sent millions of gallons of smoke-fouled water into the aquifer. Mark Harrington reports in NEWSDAY that at issue as governments rush to test groundwater now is why the state did not order groundwater tests directly after the fire, despite on-site reports from a contractor of large amounts of water running off-site.Gerard Turza Jr., fire and EMS administrator at East Hampton Village, who was at the fire scene, said his team raised questions about firewater runoff and air-quality tests during plant visits. He said plant officials haven’t provided him requested results of air-monitoring studies and "absolutely" should have conducted groundwater studies in the 2023 investigation. Only soil samples and plant swipes were taken, Newsday has reported, citing a 2023 state report.Knowing the nature of toxins early could have resulted in an earlier mitigation plan, said Turza, who is also chairman of the Suffolk County Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services Commission."They weren’t very forthcoming with information," Turza said of plant developer NextEra, which owns the $55 million plant with National Grid. "Every time I asked a question they weren’t able to provide the answer. That’s alarming in and of itself."In an email to Newsday Friday night, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation spokeswoman Cecilia Walsh noted that DEC spill responders had been “prohibited by the Fire Marshall” from going on-site at the fire until “days later,” after an internal sprinkler system had ceased and the fire was “determined to be fully extinguished.” DEC was told that runoff from the sprinkler water had migrated from the building “to an adjacent dirt road” on the southwest side of the building.Walsh wrote that DEC was told...