State police held 15 on ICE detainers
State police have turned over 15 deportable immigrants to the feds since a July policy change allowed them to hold suspects for 48 hours — a policy Boston police have not adopted.
The shift came in July, after Gov. Charlie Baker relaxed strict rules on the detention of illegal immigrants for criminal charges which were imposed by former Gov. Deval Patrick.
It came at the tail end of a three-year period when the Boston-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office saw an increasing number of detainer requests denied by local authorities.
The Herald reported yesterday that the Boston ICE office saw 59 of its requests to hold on to arrested immigrants denied last year, up from 56 in 2015 and 18 in 2014, even as the denial rate plunged nationally.
State police spokesman David Procopio said the policy change means troopers automatically notify the feds if they arrest illegals who are the subject of an ICE detainer and hold them for 48 hours to give immigration officials a chance to pick them up, even if they post bail.
“If ICE asks us to hold that person pending further action from them, we do so,” Procopio said. “Beginning in July 2016 and through Jan. 4, 2017, we arrested 76 people who were subject to ICE detainers. Of those, we were asked to hold 15 pursuant to further action by ICE, and we complied with those requests.”
The Boston Police Department has not cooperated with ICE in the same way and instead follows a policy that allows illegal immigrants with ICE detainers to be released if they can make bail.
Asked if BPD has considered changing the policy, spokesman Lt. Michael McCarthy said in a statement that the department’s practice is “very clear.”
“Every person, even those who are subject to a ICE detainer, receive equal access to bail commissioners, including notifying the prisoner of his or her right to seek bail,” McCarthy said.
“The bail commissioner makes a determination as to bail and if the arrested person posts that bail they are released from custody. The Boston Police Department does not determine who is eligible or conditions of bail for arrested persons,” he said.
Bail commissioners can decide not to offer bail to illegals with ICE detainers, but have been skittish after recent federal and state court decisions found the detainers don’t meet the probable cause standard to detain someone.
Jessica Vaughan, of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, said detention leniency was tolerated under President Obama, who she said took a hands-off approach to cities that pass “trust acts,” as Boston did in 2014, to shield non-criminal immigrants from being reported to ICE by cops.
Lenient local policies on immigration detention stem from officials “who see a political benefit in not cooperating with ICE” to gain favor with immigrant voters, Vaughn said.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with public safety, it has everything to do with politics,” she said.
Laura Rotolo, staff counsel to the ACLU of Massachusetts, said state police are on shaky legal ground, explaining, “To the extent that they are holding people solely on the basis of detainers, they’re doing so without any legal authority and in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
‘It doesn’t have anything to do with public safety, it has everything to do with politics.’ — JESSICA VAUGHN Center for Immigration Studies