Massachusetts State Troopers can now detain for 48 hours people suspected of being in the country illegally — allowing federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enough time to show up, arrest the person on federal charges, and begin deportation proceedings.
Last week, Gov. Charlie Baker ordered state police to temporarily detain arrested individuals suspected of being in the country illegally in cases where the immigrant poses a threat to national security or has been convicted of a crime. There are caveats here: before an individual can be detained, he or she has to be arrested for a crime; just being suspected of illegally being in the country isn’t enough to hold a person. And the person has to be a “high priority” for ICE, meaning the person has committed a past crime . Anything above a traffic ticket will do. ICE says the program is important to help identify and capture people who pose a national threat or have knowledge of terrorist activities. But not every community plans to follow Baker’s directive. Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz declared last week that city police will continue to not detain people for ICE. “We want immigration communities to trust the police,” he said. Unfortunately, Northampton’s plan is unlikely to assuage people’s fears of deportation or harassment. For many people, especially those who are new to the country, it is not easy to tell a state trooper from a city officer. And when you call 911, which kind of officer is going to show up?
Historically, state and local police have not been responsible, or able, to enforce civil immigration laws.
The new policy reverses former Gov. Deval Patrick’s 2014 order banning state police from detaining a person for ICE. It’s also a policy that puts thousands of people in serious danger — whether or not they have anything in their backgrounds that might put them in ICE’s sights.
Imagine being robbed, beaten, threatened, or stalked and not being able to go to the police for fear of being separated via deportation from the life you’ve built. People who need help, including victims of violent crimes, should not be put off from protection and help, regardless of why they are in this country.
But having the detainment order in place will encourage people who are in the country illegally or are close to people in this situation to refrain from seeking help from police.
Baker gets the power to do this through the Department of Homeland Security’s Priority Enforcement Program, which grants detaining authority to local and state police. The Priority Enforcement Program, or PEP, was established in 2014 and is basically the same thing as the failed Secure Communities (SComm) program of the Bush administration. Secure Communities, which came up with the 48-hour hold, was launched in 2008 and was one of the first government programs to seize upon a little-known piece of legislation approved in 1996, Section 287(g) to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which grants federal immigration services the ability to partner with state and local law enforcement agencies.
A study of Secure Communities’ chilling impact on the safety of the Latino community was outlined in Insecure Communities, a 2013 report by the University of Illinois in Chicago. Researchers found that of the thousands of Latinos they spoke with in the Chicago area, 44 percent reported they are less likely to contact police officers if they have been the victim of a crime because they fear that police officers will crack down on their immigration status or that of people they know.
Also, 38 percent of Latinos reported they feel like they are under more suspicion now that local law enforcement authorities have become involved in immigration enforcement, according to the study. This figure includes 26 percent of U.S.-born respondents, 40 percent of foreign-born respondents, and 58 percent of undocumented immigrant respondents.
The university report also found that 70 percent of undocumented immigrants reported they are less likely to contact law enforcement authorities if they were victims of a crime.
The Massachusetts population includes 650,000 Latinos who were either born in this country or immigrated here legally, and about 150,000 unauthorized immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center.
The governor’s policy will increases police harassment and unnecessary detention of individuals. It is not worth the small number of criminals it nets and deports.
Less than 3 percent of the 31.2 million people detained across the U.S. by Secure Communities from fiscal year 2009-13 were actually deported, according to ICE’s annual Interoperability Statistics. The program deported about 950,000 people during that time. For Massachusetts’ part, state authorities submitted 251,000 notices of detention to ICE, resulting in 1,148 deportations.
Establishing a trusting and safe relationship between the community and police should be considered far more important than deporting a couple hundred people every year.•
Contact Kristin Palpini at editor@valleyadvocate.com.
