Police in a wealthy enclave outside of New York City are assuring concerned residents that they will not be assisting federal immigration authorities in deporting local service workers.

Local officials in East Hampton, a town in the eastern part of Long Island, met with worried residents earlier this week to discuss President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program and how it might impact their community.

Police chief Michael Sarlo emphasized that officers are not agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and will only execute criminal warrants signed by a judge.

“If there’s a signed warrant by a judge on criminal matters, we have a duty to honor and support their efforts to ensure that the warrant is served properly,” Sarlo said at a town board meeting, according to the East Hampton Star.

Criminal warrants are typically used for violent criminals, repeat offenders, and those who have committed sex crimes. Sarlo told residents that a civil warrant would not lead to detention. He also said that police will not ask about someone’s citizenship if they come forward to report a crime.

“I haven’t seen an ICE agent in this town in I can’t tell you how long,” he added.

Another resident read out a report about Nassau County authorizing ten detectives to work with ICE on nabbing illegal immigrants. Sarlo said that will not happen in his department because it requires officers to be deputized and the town board would not allow it.

“The only way any of my officers could ever enforce federal immigration law is if they were deputized,” Sarlo said.

“The town board would not allow any of our officers to be deputized.”

East Hampton Village police chief Jeffrey Erickson spoke at a press conference later in the day and assured a resident that they will not hold illegal immigrants if ICE obtains a detainer.

“That is not correct,” Erickson said. “If it is an ICE detainer or an administrative warrant, we do not have the authority, we will not hold them.”

The Hamptons are home to many wealthy vacationers who rely on illegal immigrant labor for housekeeping, landscaping, and food service.

President Trump signed the bipartisan Laken Riley Act last month empowering federal agents to detain illegal immigrants arrested for theft and related offenses such as burglary, shoplifting, and assaulting a law enforcement officer. At the local level, law enforcement officers could assist ICE with detaining illegal immigrants for theft offenses until they are deported.

The Trump administration has deported thousands of illegal immigrants over the first couple weeks of the president’s mass deportation initiative. Federal agents under border czar Tom Homan and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have conducted raids in deep blue cities where illegal aliens are concentrated, in spite of sanctuary laws in those municipalities that protect non-citizens.

Homan has repeatedly criticized officials in sanctuary jurisdictions for endangering their communities by forcing ICE to go out onto the street to arrest illegal immigrants who have been arrested and released from jail, rather than being able to take custody of those criminal aliens in the jails.