Police, courts maintain flow of information to ICE officials

 Massachusetts lawmakers are poised to pass the Act Promoting Rule of Law, Oversight, Trust and Equal Constitutional Treatment (PROTECT Act), legislation aimed at curbing local cooperation with federal immigration officials on civil immigration enforcement and restricting ICE agents from making arrests in court houses.

But even if Gov. Maura Healey signs the PROTECT Act. into law, immigrant advocates warn that without changes to current regulations, practices and local/federal partnerships in local police departments could continue to allow a continual flow of information that enables ICE agents to target noncriminal immigrants for deportation.

“The PROTECT Act does place limitations on ICE and on contact with ICE, but it could go a lot further,” said Leon Smith, executive director of Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CfJJ), an advocacy group that in April released a report documenting different ways local police departments, courts and correctional facilities collaborate with ICE. “If we’re going to take a shot at reducing the harm ICE is causing, we should really dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s.”

The CfJJ report detailed numerous instances of collaboration that court officers and police undertake with ICE, some of it including direct communication with federal agents about the immigration status of people charged with, but not convicted of misdemeanor crimes. For instance, Massachusetts police departments, including Boston’s, routinely fingerprint people arrested for misdemeanors, even though state law only requires them to fingerprint suspects charged with felonies.

Fingerprints taken by BPD and other police departments are immediately uploaded into a Massachusetts State Police database and shared with the FBI, which then shares them with ICE. ICE agents can then show up at arraignments to take immigrants into custody before they’re able to defend themselves in court.

Muslim Justice League Executive Director Fatema Ahmad was arrested and fingerprinted after participating in a demonstration during Mayor Michelle Wu’s 2024 State of the City address, but had her charges dismissed at her arraignment. At a time when Boston police are arresting demonstrators, such as the Emerson College students who in 2024 occupied an alley off Boylston Street, fingerprinting can have severe consequences for immigrants, regardless of the legal status.

“Fingerprinting is one of the essential ways people get targeted by ICE,” she said.

In multiple incidents cited in the CfJJ report, local and state police have detained people not charged with crimes to comply with ICE civil immigration detainers in violation of the Lunn v. Commonwealth decision— a 2017 Supreme Judicial Court ruling that found that law enforcement in this state does not have the legal right to detain an individual solely based on their having violated civil immigration law. Entering the United States without authorization or overstaying a visa does not constitute a crime, under U.S. law.

The report cites the Deportation Data Project in citing 210 ICE arrests that came through 32 Massachusetts police departments, with a third of that number coming from Lawrence, Boston and Lynn.

The PROTECT Act would make it illegal for police and court officers to continue collaborating with ICE, but criminal defense attorney Carl Williams says many of the ICE detentions that happen inside and outside of court houses and police precincts are happening through direct, unofficial communication between police officers and ICE agents even in the absence of detainer requests.

“In court houses, jails and houses of correction and in police departments, people are making calls to ICE,” he said. “We know that. All the undocumented community knows that.”

Ahmad, too, said the informal communications between local officers and ICE are a widespread problem.

“Often, we don’t know that it’s happened,” she said. “The communication could be verbal. It’s really hard to track.”

The direct communications between local law enforcement and ICE, have far-reaching implications for the justice system, Williams says.

“People aren’t going to the police to file reports, to get restraining orders,” he said. “If police departments wanted to, they could start firing people for that.”

Until now, there appears to have been little incentive for local police departments to crack down on individual officers who communicate with ICE outside of offices channels.

Boston Police Detective Juan Seoane, who faced an internal investigation after a 2017 incident where he reported a construction worker to the BPD ICE liaison and coordinated his arrest with ICE — a violation of Boston’s 2014 Trust Act ordinance. BPD no longer has an ICE liaison, but Seoane who was in 2022 recognized as a “detective of the year” by the Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society, was still in the department’s employ as of February this year.

While the actions of individual police and court officers and, in many cases, police and court policies affect immigrants facing arrest, local police departments’ formalized information sharing with federal officials have long been seen as a means for targeting immigrants who have never been arrested.

Through fusion centers including the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) and the Massachusetts Fusion Center, local and state police share information with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under which ICE operates and other federal authorities. Boston’s gang database, its surveillance reports on nonviolent demonstrators — such as those supporting police reform, opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza or the Occupy Wallstreet movement — are shared with federal officials who work directly with ICE.

Additionally, BPD and other local departments participate in federal policing taskforces and memoranda of understanding under which officers are designated as customs officers who can assist ICE.

The CfJJ report quotes the memorandum of agreement between BPD and the DHS, noting that it requires the Boston department to: “(3) provide access to Host databases, reports, investigations, and other information produced, retained, and/or controlled by the Host in order to review this information and assist the Host in identifying the types of information, including enforcement information, that may assist DHS or other entities with homeland security responsibilities.”

Smith pointed to Boston’s gang database, which is administered by and housed in the BRIC office, as a potential means for ICE to target immigrants. A 2022 decision in a case of an immigrant incorrectly labeled as a gang member and targeted by DHS for deportation found the BPD database relied on an “erratic point system built on unsubstantiated inferences” to determine whether an individual is gang affiliated.

“If someone’s in that database, even if they’re not gang-affiliated, it can be fatal to an immigration case,” Smith said.

Boston police officials have long maintained that they do not share information directly with ICE. But they do share information with the FBI, which works with ICE on civil immigration enforcement and a DHS officers shares office space with Boston and other local police officials at the BRIC.

While citing its limitations in combatting ICE overreach, the CfJJ report recommends passage of the PROTECT Act, a version of which passed in the Senate last week. In its current form, the legislation would make it illegal under Massachusetts law for police to engage in civil immigration enforcement.

“It prevents any kind of inquiries about immigration status with very limited exemptions,” said Sen. Lydia Edwards, who notes any communications with ICE must now be approved by supervising officers and documented.

“They have to document it,” she said. “They have to get the permission from a supervisor and they have to put down in writing who gave them permission. When we see patterns from certain police stations and certain police officers, we can call and say, ‘you’re giving out too much information.’”