THE GAZETTE
Wednesday, October 16, 2013 z
Page A-7
ACLU: Stop using federal ICE warrants to arrest undocumented workers County police say more action needed
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BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH STAFF WRITER
Civil rights activists say a federal court decision halting the use of administrative warrants to make immigration-related arrests is a major win. The ruling, issued by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Aug. 7, stops law enforcement officials from detaining, searching, stopping, or arresting anyone based on a civil warrant from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Late last month, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Maryland affiliate and Casa of Maryland sent a letter to law enforcement agencies around Maryland, informing them of the Aug. 7 ruling and urging them to change their policies to comply with the ruling. The Court of Appeals ruling does not apply to warrants sought by ICE for criminal offenses. The letter from the ACLU
also highlighted a memo issued by Montgomery County police instructing officers not to make stops or arrests based solely on an ICE warrant. “It’s such a cultural shift given that most Maryland police departments routinely arrest people ... that it was worth drawing people’s attention to this,” said Sirine Shebaya, an immigration rights lawyer at the ACLU in Maryland. Critics of the practice of detaining individuals with administrative warrants said local police and sheriff agencies should not be enforcing federal immigration policy because it erodes community trust of local law enforcement. “[The warrants] are administrative, issued by an agency, without review by a neutral magistrate, and the only thing they indicate is a civil immigration violation, which is not something local law enforcement has the authority to enforce absent authorization,” Shebaya said in an email. Some local law enforcement officials dispute that claim, citing recent data from the Center for Immigration Studies, an
immigration-issues think tank, which says that enforcement of ICE warrants does not affect local policing. Officials from ICE did not return calls for comment; its website is not being managed during the partial federal government shutdown. Shebaya, of the ACLU, said Montgomery was one county that quickly notified its officers of the change. In an Aug. 12 memo to Montgomery County Police, Chief J. Thomas Manger wrote that Montgomery “officers who receive a ‘hit’ for an ICE civil warrant via [the National Criminal Information Center] will not use that information to stop, detain, search, or arrest any individual solely on the basis of the ICE warrant.” The center is a federal database of criime information. The ruling would not significantly affect the number of arrests Montgomery officers make, Manger said. Enforcing civil warrants represents a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of “contacts” Montgomery County Police make
with civilians in the course of a year, he said. Before the recent court ruling, when officers stopped or searched someone, officers would run the person’s name in the criminal center database as they would during any stop. If there was an administrative ICE warrant for the person in the system, police could detain the person for up to 48 hours for ICE agents to take custody of them, Manger said. However, the memo reflects a change in policy in how officers handled stops before the Court of Appeals’ decision, he said. After the 9/11 attacks, the federal government included warrants from the agencies that now make up ICE in the crime center database. The warrants differed from other warrants in that they were not issued by a neutral magistrate, and were for civil immi-
gration violations, Shebaya said. The recent judicial ruling only applies to those warrants, not warrants that ICE might seek for criminal offenses. The ruling came from Santos v. Frederick County, in which Frederick County sheriff’s deputies arrested a woman on immigration charges. Civil rights activists and law enforcement officials have a wide range of opinions on the ruling and what actions should be taken. Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, for example, said he was appealing the decision, and hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will hear it. Sirine said the Supreme Court previously ruled that local law enforcement officials do not on their own have the authority to enforce federal civil immigration laws. “It would be very surprising if
the Supreme Court were to even hear the case, let alone side with Frederick County,” she said. However, on the narrower point of how to deal with administrative ICE warrants, activists and law enforcement appear to agree. Now, when officers make a stop, they have one more element to deal with, Manger said. “Now, they have to check, is it civil or criminal?” he said, later adding, “The Fourth District decision makes it even more critical to take [the civil warrants] out of the system.” Jenkins agreed. “Why do they even put these warrants as arrest warrants into the [crime center database]? Why do they put the onus on local enforcement?” he asked. He said that, for now, his deputies wouldn’t change their routines much. “We’re going to police the way we always have,” he said.
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