This article was published in collaboration with Bolts.

Central New York’s Tompkins County, home to Ithaca, found itself in the federal government’s crosshairs last month when the Trump administration made the county a focal point of the president’s push to force localities to dedicate resources to mass deportations.

Sheriff Derek Osborne did something routine: He released a man from jail after he’d served his sentence. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement wanted Osborne to hold the man, an undocumented immigrant, past his release date so the federal agency could arrest and deport him.

The US Department of Justice is now investigating and threatening to prosecute the sheriff for failing to cooperate with ICE, though it’s not clear what the department would charge him with.

The threats show how far the Trump administration is willing to go to pressure local police to work with ICE and may serve as a test case for whether federal officials can successfully spook local officials into compliance.

The New York state prison system is teetering on disaster as guards have staged an unsanctioned wildcat strike at almost all of its 42 facilities. Governor Kathy Hochul has deployed the National Guard and, on Wednesday, obtained a court order mandating that corrections officers return to work.

While striking officers have been mostly mum to the press, Assemblymember Scott Gray, who visited picket lines outside three northern New York prisons and went inside two this week, told New York Focus that they’re determined to wrest concessions from the state and from their employer, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

“The members seem to be resolved in their determination to hang tight until some sort of corrective action is taken,” he said. To facilitate negotiations, the picketers are working on paring down their original list of 13 demands, Gray said.

The guards will likely stick to their guns on pay and staffing issues. They also appear resolute on one of their most ambitious demands: repealing a four-year-old solitary confinement reform law. That would likely require action by the slow-moving and relatively progressive state legislature, though both Gray and the union’s executive vice president have told New York Focus that officers are asking the governor to explore what authority she has to chip away at the law.

Roughly 150 prison officers huddled around burn barrels across the street from Clinton Correctional Facility in northern New York as they staged a work stoppage Tuesday afternoon. An hour’s drive south, about three dozen guards used a grove of pine trees to shield themselves from the single-digit cold as they picketed in front of the medium-security Adirondack Correctional Facility.

Clinton, Adirondack, and at least 23 other New York state prisons saw guards walk off the job Tuesday — part of an unsanctioned wildcat strike that began at two western New York facilities this week and quickly spread to over half the prison system. Guards are demanding that the prison agency address chronic understaffing and that the state overturn a solitary confinement reform law.

While guards haven’t mentioned it, the strike also acts as a counter to recent pressure to rein in officers: Since the state released video of guards beating an incarcerated man to death in December, state legislators, advocates, and Governor Kathy Hochul have pushed to increase scrutiny on prison officers and hold abusive guards to account.

The New York health department is planning to implement a potentially lifesaving 2022 law that it has ignored for years after New York Focus recently reported on the department’s failure to act.

The law, known as the Living Donor Support Act, would reimburse voluntary kidney donors up to $14,000 for their medical costs, travel, and lost wages. Supporters estimate that it could save up to 100 lives a year, at low cost to the state.

The law was required to take effect in spring 2023, but the health department failed to implement it, citing problems hiring staff and designing the program.

But that may soon change.