A coalition of organizations submitted a proposal Monday to Syracuse lawmakers calling for the city to ice out companies with demonstrated ties to President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.
Syracuse’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America sent Common Council President Rita Paniagua a letter asking councilors to pass a resolution that would deny the renewal of city contracts with companies supporting the federal government’s detention and deportation operations. The policy memo, also reviewed by Central Current, is titled “Melt the Contracts.”
The resolution comes at a time when some companies that are key to the removal operations carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are withdrawing from their contracts with the federal government. On Wednesday, Avelo Airlines ended their agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to remove immigrants from the country after municipal government bodies, like New Haven, Connecticut’s city council, ended up their contract with the airline.
Syracuse DSA member Genevieve Garcia Kendrick, who co-authored the resolution last fall, says the local measure would apply similar pressure to other companies locally aiding the deportation of migrants.
Garcia Kendrick said companies like Axon and Flock Safety are both examples of companies that do business with DHS, operate within the city, and could be subject to further scrutiny through the resolution.
Axon provides the Syracuse Police Department with body-worn cameras and SWAT drones — and would be the city’s provider for the deeply unpopular proposed “Drone as First Responder” program, which still awaits council approval.
The department has already purchased Axon drones for the DFR program, but the council for over a year has delayed a vote on the purchase of Axon software necessary for that program.
Flock Safety provides the police department with license plate readers and cloud-based data storage. The company fielded criticism throughout 2025 in Syracuse and beyond, as Flock was found to have repeatedly allowed federal immigration agents to leverage the data of its customers.
Following those developments, dozens of localities terminated their contracts with Flock.
“Ending public funding does matter and it does work,” Garcia Kendrick said.
DSA and the other organizations behind “Melt the Contracts,” which include CNY Solidarity Coalition, Jewish Voices for Peace, the Workers Center of CNY, Syracuse Peace Council and the Syracuse Immigrant and Refugee Defense Network say they want councilors to bring the resolution to the floor by Jan. 26.
That is the last council meeting scheduled in January. Garcia Kendrick said she hopes to have a packed house of residents who support the resolution. Advocates have been circulating a petition for the past week to pressure the council to adopt the measure, which has garnered more than 300 signatures as of last week, Garcia Kendrick said.
But councilors have said they do not have a timeline for when they would deliberate on the measure. So far, DSA has spoken to councilors Chol Majok, Donna Moore, and Hanah Ehrenreich about the resolution being on a council agenda before the end of the month.
The three councilors told Central Current that they still need to meet and have a discussion in earnest about the resolution. Ehrenreich said she fully supports the measure and wants to talk to other city officials about how the resolution could be enacted. Majok and Moore declined to comment further on the resolution and said the council needs more time to review the proposal.
Garcia Kendrick said the resolution was drafted to protect community members from bearing the brunt of Trump’s campaign of deportations. It also ensures that city taxpayers don’t contribute financially to the operations carried out by ICE, Garcia Kendrick said.
Through November, ICE arrested 161 people in Onondaga County in 2025, according to records from the Deportation Data Project.
“Our public funding should be appropriated for the public good, that’s the bottom line,” she said. “That is just showing another commitment that the city can make to ensuring their constituents are safe and that their money is being spent well.”
The resolution calls for the city to review and update its procurement policies to follow the pledge in the resolution and also establish a process to identify and exclude companies with companies aiding in mass deportations. It vets contracts that are up for renewal and contracts that have not yet been signed.
“We should not be funding commercial vendors who are instrumental in breaking the rule of law in this country,” Ehrenreich said in reference to instances in which immigrants are facing expedited removal from the U.S. without lawful due process.
The Trump administration expanded expedited removal proceedings last January, and legal scholars have since worried that the breakneck pace of removals promised by Trump has resulted in the deportation of people without a judicial hearing.
“This is very much about protecting residents of Syracuse and people who come to this country with hope in their hearts,” Ehrenreich said of the resolution.
Who might feel the ‘Melt’ resolution’s heat?
To enact the resolution, advocates from the coalition of organizations backing the measure propose three ways to evaluate city contracts to ensure businesses don’t aid in or profit from immigration enforcement.
The first is a requirement that all companies seeking city contracts to certify through self-disclosure that they do not engage in or support unjust detainment or deportation practices as determined by the Common Council. Companies would also need to provide a non-involvement report for the city to review.
Another solution proposed by advocates is to create a review board composed of volunteers, elected officials, and city staff, to hold companies accountable to the council’s contracting standards.
Lastly, the council could also decide to delegate vetting of contracts to the city auditor, according to the proposal reviewed by Central Current.
City Auditor Alex Marion commended the local DSA chapter’s efforts to ensure taxpayer dollars are not enriching individuals and entities benefiting from the White House’s deportation operations.
“The city should use its purchasing power to advance our shared good – that’s also why I’ve called for overhauling our outdated Living Wage Ordinance,” Marion said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the Common Council and community organizers to achieve this goal together and hold our vendors accountable.”
Prior to the resolution landing in their inboxes, some councilors were already working toward accountability for Flock’s failure to safeguard Syracuse’s data from other law enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Councilors Jimmy Monto and Corey Williams introduced legislation in the last few months of the year to block the city’s license plate reader provider, Flock Safety, from accessing city streets.
Their legislative efforts aim to sever the city’s ties to Flock, citing multiple instances in which outside entities like ICE and CBP gained unauthorized access to sensitive data on Syracuse drivers’ movements.
The first step in the process to distance the city from Flock came in November, when the council unanimously voted to block Flock from installing two new readers on city property for Syracuse University’s own fledgling license plate reader program.
The university began installing readers at the same time as dozens of municipalities around the country started reviewing and in some instances terminating their relationships with Flock.
Councilors are considering installing a new license plate reader program through a different provider following repeated claims from the Syracuse Police Department that the license plate readers facilitate the jobs of criminal investigators.
Flock’s main competitors, Axon and Motorola Solutions, both have extensive relationships with the federal government. Terminating Syracuse’s Flock contract could satisfy the concerns of the coalition behind “Melt the Contracts” — but whatever fills Flock’s void may present new concerns for local advocates.
Axon has recently integrated face recognition technology into its body-worn cameras in a pilot program with a Canadian police department. The company previously stated it was halting the integration of facial recognition technology in its body-worn cameras.
“By testing in real-world conditions outside the U.S., we can gather independent insights, strengthen oversight frameworks, and apply those learnings to future evaluations, including within the United States,” Axon founder and Chief operating Officer Rick Smith wrote in a press release announcing the pilot program with the Edmonton Police Service in in Alberta, Canada.
Former Mayor Ben Walsh in 2021 banned the local government’s use of biometric surveillance through his Surveillance Technology Executive Order, and warned against it during the final meeting of the city’s Surveillance Technology Working Group.
Other companies with ties to DHS include SoundThinking, inc. — formerly ShotSpotter — and Jenoptik, the city’s new provider for traffic enforcement surveillance cameras. DHS has a $1.6 million contract with SoundThinking and funds grants for local law enforcement agencies to use to purchase ShotSpotter tools.
The department has also funded grants for local law police departments in Texas to purchase a Jenoptik product called TraffiCatch, which integrates Bluetooth surveillance into Jenoptik’s automatic license plate readers.
Garcia Kendrick also listed Cellebrite as a company used by Syracuse law enforcement that the coalition wants out of Syracuse.
The Israeli cellular data analysis company provides tools that allow law enforcement agents to access locked cellphones and other devices. Israeli Defense Forces and Serbian authorities have faced criticism for their use of Cellebrite tools, which advocacy groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International say can help facilitate repression and human rights violations.
Cellebrite has donated products to a Syracuse non-profit in recent years. Central Current asked Syracuse Police Department spokesperson Kieran Coffey if the department had an active contract with Cellebrite or otherwise engaged with the company in any other capacity, but Coffey did not respond by the time of publication.
Councilor Marty Nave said he has yet to review the resolution, but is supportive of the organizations’ main goal of removing companies from Syracuse if they are facilitating or profiting from the White House’s operations targeting immigrants and their supporters.
“In this city, we don’t do business with companies that associate with ICE — who use Gestapo tactics,” Nave said.
Ultimately, for advocates of the resolution, “Melt The Contracts” is about re-orienting the city’s spending priorities back to contracting that doesn’t benefit from abuses of civil liberties, Ehrenreich said.
“Whatever we can do at the local level. We have very few powers … against the broad reach of the federal government,” Ehrenreich noted. “But if there is something that we can do, we should do it.”