An ‘authoritarian ideology’ in Riverhead Town Hall

To the Editor:

A rigid authoritarian ideology has established itself at Riverhead Town Hall. True public servants look at a vulnerable population—like our hard-working Latino neighbors—and ask how we can ensure they have basic human rights, public safety, and legal clarity while living in our community. True public servants ask how we can ensure all children have the opportunity to build the bonds of friendship we recently saw in a photo from Flag Day at Riley Avenue School—a beautiful image of a diverse group of kids smiling arm-in-arm.

But for the Riverhead Town Board, the playbook is entirely different. It is a playbook of calculated exclusion. By stonewalling every attempt by residents and OLA of Eastern Long Island  to discuss a local public safety framework regarding ICE, the board is sending a loud, clear signal to our immigrant community: You don’t belong here, and we don’t care what happens to you. The safety and wellbeing of your children are not our concern.

The board members are too politically calculated to use crude, overt rhetoric in public. Instead, they wield the ultimate authoritarian tool: systemic exclusion. They have allowed the town’s Anti-Bias Task Force to wither into virtual non-existence. They ignore the eyewitness reports of rapid responders. They pretend the terror felt by local families during unannounced immigration actions is merely a “created narrative.”

This is xenophobia disguised as governance. It is an ideology that views human rights as a zero-sum game, where protecting an undocumented neighbor somehow diminishes someone else. As a lifelong resident of Riverhead, I cannot sit by while the town I love is governed by fear and a rigid loyalty to a political cause. It is time to reject this quiet cruelty. We are talking about basic human dignity, the safety of families, and the physical and emotional wellbeing of schoolchildren.

It is time for elected officials to end the stonewalling and the silence. The forecast is unmistakable: ICE will be conducting both more targeted actions and more random raids in Riverhead. While we cannot prevent these actions, we can—and must—prepare for them. Instead of taking prudent steps to ready our community for the coming storm, the Town Board acts as if the storm clouds will magically turn direction and spare our little town.

Right now, every time ICE shows up, town leaders nonchalantly hand over the keys to our municipality. By ceding the destiny of our town and its residents to armed federal authorities, they are abandoning the very definition of leadership. They have no plan for dealing with the fallout of ICE actions in Riverhead. They have no plan to mitigate the risk of civil financial liability, no plan to ensure senior citizens retain access to emergency healthcare, and no plan to protect innocent schoolchildren from becoming collateral damage during a deportation raid. The storm is looming, and our elected officials are playing politics instead of preparing.

If our elected officials lack the basic humanity to ensure the safety of all town residents, then they lack the moral authority to lead. If they lack the conviction to plan for foreseeable crises, then they lack the organizational capacity to lead. At this critical moment in our town’s history, when true leadership is desperately called for, our elected officials are simply failing to show up.

Colin W. Tooker
Riverhead