In response to the Your View letter “Local officials should work with ICE” by Dick Horton: Mr. Horton characterizes the horrific capture, abuse, and kidnapping of a suspected undocumented immigrant in front of young children as “unfortunate.” Unfortunate is when you lose your sunglasses. This was horrific and these children will likely be traumatized for the rest of their lives.
I say kidnapping, because ICE profiles suspects and grabs people in their homes and off the streets frequently without warrants. Many are innocent, mistakenly captured and released later, traumatized. This is because the Trump administration has created quotas that ICE must meet, far exceeding the number of violent undocumented immigrants. This is immoral and illegal.
Mr. Horton goes on to say, “Maybe if Massachusetts and other states and localities decided to obey the law it would induce congress to work together to figure out how to deal with the whole situation.” In fact, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) decision in Lunn v. Commonwealth (2017) ruled that state and local law enforcement officers lack the legal authority under state law to arrest or detain individuals based solely on a federal civil immigration detainer (an ICE request to hold a person). Detaining someone solely for federal civil immigration purposes violates Massachusetts law, as state arrest authority is limited to criminal offenses or specific statutory exceptions.
– Robert Antall