ICE clashes with Boston police over requests to detain immigrants

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials disagreed Boston Police Claims that it rejected 15 requests to detain people who were at risk of deportation last year, saying that police had in fact rejected almost 200 such requests.

The federal immigration agency says the people ICE wanted removed from the country were arrested on suspicion of armed robbery, assault resulting in murder and drug trafficking.

Boston police officers, however, said they did not have the authority to continue detaining the suspects for transfer to ICE custody. Municipal Act of 2014, which the City Council confirmed last monthbanned police from enforcing civil immigration laws or asking questions about a person’s immigration status.

In a letter to the Boston city clerk filed this week, Police Commissioner Michael Cox said the department received 15 immigration detention requests from ICE in 2024.

Tasks are non-binding notices that ask local law enforcement to notify ICE before releasing a person who the agency determines is deportable, or to hold the person for an additional 48 hours, giving federal agents time to detain the person.

Tasks they are not criminal orders.

Municipal Act of 2014, the so-called Trust Actprohibited police from continuing to detain a person solely at the request of ICE. Police said they had no authority to arrest a person who had posted bail or been remanded into court custody.

The law does not prevent police from cooperating with ICE in criminal investigations into drugs, gangs, smuggling and other matters.

Cox said Boston police declined to act on any of the 15 documented detainer requests.

Supporters of the Trust Act argue that it makes Boston safer by allowing immigrants to interact with local police and assist in investigations without fear of deportation.

“The Boston Police Department remains committed to upholding the Boston Trust Act and building and strengthening relationships and trust with all of our communities,” Cox wrote to the city official. “Boston’s immigrant communities should feel safe reporting crimes and quality of life issues to the Department and actively engaging with all members of the Boston Police Service.”

On Friday, an ICE spokesman argued that the number of applications sent to city police in 2024 was actually much larger than the 15 Coxes described.

“After careful review,” the agency identified 198 detainer requests submitted to Boston police, ICE spokeswoman Yolanda Choates wrote in an email to MassLive. She added that the police did not comply with any of the requests.

In each of these cases, ICE had probable cause to believe that the people arrested in Boston were “removable non-citizens,” Choates wrote.

They were charged with “egregious criminal activity,” she added, “including armed robbery, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault and battery on a police officer, possession of a firearm, possession of a large capacity weapon, assault with intent to murder, distribution of fentanyl, trafficking in heroin, indecent assault and battery on a person 14 years of age or older, possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, possession with intent to distribute cocaine, and trafficking in excess of 200 grams of cocaine.”

“Immigration detainers do not constitute an arrest warrant or contain information regarding criminal conduct,” Mariellen Burns, communications chief for the Boston Police Department, responded Friday.

She also acknowledged that the department “may have different information” than federal officials about the number of detainer requests ICE has sent.

“In January 2023, BPD asked ICE to stop sending detention requests only by fax to county stations and also send them to a central email address. To date, ICE has not used this email address,” Burns wrote in an email to MassLive. “BPD will continue to work with local authorities to establish better means of communication for civilian detainer requests to meet annual reporting requirements.”

Boston police said the 15 applications it received from ICE last year were down from 19 in 2023. But according to city data, there were still more than 12 in 2022 and two in 2021. Cox said all of last year’s applications sent by fax.

Neither police nor ICE responded to requests to explain the wide discrepancies in the number of detainer requests they said were issued.

For just over a week, local police and federal immigration officials have been wrangling between former President Donald Trump and his return to the nation’s highest office, which he reclaimed on a platform that included lofty promises of mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

His upcoming border czar, Tom Homan, publicly sparred with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu in the weeks after the November election due to the city’s limited cooperation with ICE on non-criminal immigration matters.

On Friday, Choates also criticized Boston’s refusal to hold detainees for ICE based solely on detainee requests.

“Laws forcing city and state government employees to ignore ICE requests for assistance do not protect law-abiding members of the community,” Choates wrote. “The decision not to cooperate with ICE threatens public and national security by making it impossible to hold ICE in a safe environment.”

Instead, she added, immigration officers were forced to track down the suspects and “attempt public arrest.”