Robbery suspect broke the ICE
Was face of immigration-detention case
An alleged drug addict — who was the face of a blockbuster high-court case that bars Bay State law enforcement from holding illegal immigrants for the feds — has been arrested for a brazen broad-daylight robbery and attack on an elderly woman in a wheelchair, police say.
Sreynuon Lunn, who was born to Cambodian parents in a refugee camp in Thailand, was arrested Tuesday after police say he and a friend, identified as Tiffany Bovio, wheeled an older woman away from a Bank of America near Charles River Plaza, hit her in the head and took $2,000 from her.
“Lunn stated to a (Massachusetts General Hospital) Police Officer that he and a female known to him as ‘Tiffany’ robbed (the victim) because he stated that he was detoxing and needed drugs,” according to a police report.
“Lunn stated it was Tiffany’s idea and that she kept the majority of the money and that he simply used it to ‘buy a suboxone’ from Tiffany,” the report says.
Security camera footage shows Lunn and Bovio pushing the victim in a wheelchair from the direction of the Bank of America to where the woman was robbed, according to the report. Four minutes later, they were seen walking away from the robbery area together, police say.
Lunn and Bovio were arrested shortly after the robbery, according to authorities. Lunn was held on $2,500 cash bail after a hearing Wednesday at Boston Municipal Court. Bovio was held on $500.
A previous case involving Lunn was instrumental in changing the way state officials and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents cooperate. In February, Suffolk prosecutors dropped an unarmed robbery charge against Lunn, but a judge refused to release him because the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a civil immigration detainer against him.
State public defenders and civil rights attorneys bristled at the practice and appealed the judge’s decision to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, arguing that Lunn was unconstitutionally detained by state officials.
The SJC agreed, and ruled in July that court officers — and potentially all members of law enforcement — do not have the authority to arrest someone “at the request of Federal immigration authorities, pursuant to a civil immigration detainer.”
The SJC’s decision had no bearing on why Lunn was sprung from jail on May 25. He was released by ICE from the Suffolk County jail after federal agents were unable to get travel documents from Cambodian officials, who do not consider him a citizen there.
In effect, Lunn is a man with no country, and under a ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001, ICE cannot indefinitely hold him.
“ICE’s detention authority is limited to that time necessary to carry out a removal,” an ICE official wrote in an email. “ICE was unable to secure a travel document to allow Lunn’s return to his country of citizenship. When subjects cannot be removed, they must be released from ICE custody.”
Some who decry the landmark Supreme Court case — Zadvydas v. Davis — say it allows dangerous illegal immigrants to go free and commit crimes when they should no longer be in the United States.
“This forces ICE to release criminal aliens instead of sending them back to their home countries,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the conservative Center for Immigration Studies.
“Inevitably, this will result in more crimes,” she said. “Noncitizen criminals tend to reoffend just like American criminals do.”