No ICE in my Backyard
Like many of you receiving this newsletter, watching reports of ICE hauling people off our streets without showing their faces, warrants, badges, or any other information has been alarming and infuriating. Incidents like what happened in Worcester on May 9th—where the community tried to protect a local mother and refugee from being taken, only for local police to arrest one of her daughters and a local resident—show that due process doesn’t matter to ICE. The question now is, how can we ensure due process matters to our local law enforcement?
First up, some background, because knowledge is power. Due process is the government’s requirement to follow fair procedures and laws. Specifically, for the purposes of this discussion, we care about the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Fifth Amendment says that “no person … shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” and the Fourteenth Amendment makes it even more clear by drawing an obvious distinction between requiring that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” and “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” If due process was only intended to apply to citizens of the United States, the amendments would have explicitly said so. Instead, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments explicitly state that the U.S. government cannot abridge the rights of citizens, and cannot deprive “any person” of life or liberty without due process.
To get around this Constitutional inconvenience, the Trump Administration and ICE goons are using a process called “expedited removal,” originally created under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. While this was originally intended to allow immigration officers to turn away people who did not have valid documentation at ports of entry, Trump and his ilk have transformed this process into something gruesome. From June 2020 through March 2022, and again beginning in our current reign of terror in January 2025, immigration officers have now been authorized to apply expedited removal to any non-citizen who entered the United States without proper entry documents, or who was improperly admitted due to fraud or misrepresentation, and who cannot prove that they have been physically present in the United States for two years. Do you regularly carry around documentation to show that you have lived somewhere for more than two years? I certainly don’t carry around my leases or utility bills on the offchance I get asked for them. But based on the videos I’ve seen of ICE taking people off the street, it also doesn’t seem like the refugees have much chance to prove anything to ICE, even if they do have that paperwork, since ICE doesn’t ask for documentation or even give people a chance to go back into their house to get it. And under the expedited removal process, the chances that a refugee will ever see the inside of a courthouse or an immigration hearing are slim. People have even been taken by ICE from inside courthouses without any intervention. To put it simply, if ICE can take anyone off the street, with no questions asked, with the help of local law enforcement, and deport them without the person ever having a chance to prove who they are in a court of law, they are being denied due process. And if ICE makes a habit of removing people from the U.S. without checking their identity or status, then anyone could be deported without due process—how would you be able to prove you have a right to be in the U.S. if you’re prevented from picking up your birth certificate from home, calling your lawyer or family, or seeing a judge who can sort the whole misunderstanding out? In fact, we know ICE has already deported natural-born citizens. And they will keep doing it if our leaders don’t take more action.
Which, finally, brings me to our local police departments. Like many of you, my Massachusetts town has tried to address the concern that many patriotic Americans feel about ICE taking people in broad daylight by ordering the local police department to not cooperate with ICE and to not “inquire about or collect any information regarding the citizenship or immigration status of any individual” unless they are compelled to do so by federal or state laws. While this policy is a start, it doesn’t fully address several important questions about how these ICE raids actually go down and how the police would deal with such a situation. So I asked the following questions of my city councilors and local chief of police:
Question 1: Would the police require federal immigration officers to show that they have a valid immigration or judicial warrant before taking someone. If the federal immigration officers do not show a warrant, would the local police treat this as a kidnapping?
Answer 1: The answer to this was a firm NO. We were told that immigration officers are not “mandated or required to show anything to the local police department if they are performing an operation.”
Question 2: The town policy states that local police will report immigration status to federal immigration officials if a person is arrested for various crimes, including (among other things) “assault with a dangerous weapon.” Simply being arrested should not be a basis for reporting immigration in a country where people are innocent until proven guilty. And standard for assault with a dangerous weapon sets a low bar when the weapon is defined so broadly it can include multi-tools, box cutters, and screwdrivers. This standard seems ripe for abuse and should be reviewed.
Answer 2: The town police department replied that they do not report people to ICE directly, but that when a person is arrested, they are fingerprinted and the fingerprints are shared electronically on a national database to every law enforcement agency in the country, including ICE.
My local representative and police department also provided a copy of a legal advisory that was sent by the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, informing its members on what they can and cannot do in cooperating with immigration officials.
These were some of the biggest advisory takeaways:
If ICE provides only a civil detainer (i.e., signed by an immigrant officer, not a judge), local law enforcement in Massachusetts do not have legal authority to detain the individual beyond their legal release date under MA Supreme Judicial Court decision Commonwealth v. Lunn (2017).
Local police officers were advised that they “cannot obstruct or interfere” with ICE operations under the following federal statutes: 18 U.S.C. §§ 111, 371, and 1505. Specifically, the advisory said that “Officers should not obstruct ICE agents in their lawful duties (e.g., executing a valid arrest warrant).”
Eagle-eyed readers will note that there seems to be a disconnect between officers needing to make sure they don’t obstruct the execution of a valid arrest warrant, and my local police department’s position that they can’t ask to see ICE agents’ badges or warrants. The fact that the advisory specifically says officers shouldn’t obstruct lawful duties such as executing valid arrest warrants suggests they do, in fact, have the ability to verify that ICE agents are performing lawful duties and executing valid arrest warrants—they just choose not to. Importantly, allowing people to be hauled off in broad daylight (or even assisting ICE agents in doing so) without verifying that those agents have valid authority to do so is most certainly a breach of the Massachusetts Constitution, which says in Article I:
All [people] are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.
Original Art by Jezzie
What you can do
So what does all this mean for us, as concerned citizens? Here are seven action items that we can all do today:
Community Level
Donate or volunteer with LUCE’s ICE watch initiative, especially if you’re multilingual. Can’t volunteer? Save 617-370-5023 in your phone and call to report any suspected ICE sightings.
Donate to the Beyond Bond Legal Defense Fund, which helps provide legal and financial support to our community members impacted by ICE.
City Level
Be an informed citizen and read your town’s non-cooperation policy (if there is one, or if not, ask them to enact one), and ask yourself these questions:
Does this policy require ICE to show a valid warrant before arresting someone?
Does this policy require police to assist ICE in any way, and if so, does this make sense?
Is the policy subject to abuse by local law enforcement, or does it give local law enforcement easy outs?
How can we make this policy stronger?
State Level
Continue to call your representatives. Follow our script for calling Governor Healey and Attorney General Campbell. Ask them to commit to the following:
Local police must verify that ICE operations at which they are present have a valid warrant for the person being detained and that the ICE agents have badges or other identification sufficient to establish their authority to detain the person.
Arresting people without providing a valid warrant for their arrest is contrary to Massachusetts law and our state constitution.
Sign LUCE’s petition directed at Maura Healey.
Follow Swing Blue Alliance’s call script to call your state senator to support the Safe Communities Act.
Federal Level
Call your federal representatives and ask them to revise the cited federal statutes (18 U.S.C. §§ 111, 371, and 1505) to ensure that state law guarantees of due process must be followed.
Enjoyed this article? Get updates on the movement, volunteer opportunities, and more by clicking below.