State Police can now detain illegal aliens for feds
State Police can now detain undocumented immigrants for feds
ByEric Levenson
12:00 PM
Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration has reversed a key policy on undocumented immigrants from the prior state leadership in order to align with a recently enacted federal program, state officials said.
State Police will now be allowed to temporarily detain undocumented immigrants who are under state arrest and who have been flagged by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Under former Gov. Deval Patrick, State Police had been barred from following ICE requests for temporary detention, and communication between the two agencies was limited.
The change puts the state in line with the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), a federal program operated under the Department of Homeland Security. PEP seeks to prioritize deporting only those undocumented immigrants who pose a threat to the public.
Patrick had enacted his administration’s policy in response to a previous federal immigration program called Secure Communities, which critics said deported non-violent undocumented immigrants. PEP replaced Secure Communities in July 2015.
“This policy revision gives the professionals of our statewide policing agency the tools necessary to detain criminals, gang members, or suspected terrorists wanted by federal authorities,” Baker said in a statement. “As before, the State Police will not be enforcing federal immigration law nor will they inquire about immigration status; they will now be able to assist in detaining for our federal partners individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety or national security.”
The change goes into effect on Thursday, officials said.
Under the federal PEP program, the ICE officials can request for State Police to detain only those removable aliens who are suspected of terrorism, convicted of gang-related crimes or felonies, or have three non-traffic-related misdemeanors.
“With their statewide jurisdiction, the State Police encounter a broad range of individuals on a daily basis and it makes sense from a public safety perspective to allow them to report and temporarily hold any type of individual wanted by federal authorities,” Secretary of Public Safety and Security Dan Bennett said in a statement.
As with Patrick’s policy, state troopers are still not allowed to stop people to ask about their immigration status.
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/...ce-immigration
Massachusetts Will Allow State Police to Hold Illegal Immigrants for the Feds
by CAROLINE MAY
2 Jun 2016
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is taking steps to reverse a sanctuary policy — that shielded illegal immigrants from federal immigration enforcement officials — put in place under his predecessor Deval Patrick.
The Boston Herald reports that the Baker administration is lifting the 2014 policy prohibiting state police from holding illegal immigrants at the request of federal immigration officials.
“I think this strikes the right balance,” Baker said in an interview with the Herald.
Massachusetts’ renewed effort to cooperate with federal immigration authorities coincides with the Obama administration’s attempt to woo so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement by ditching the Secure Communities program in favor of its less comprehensive Priority Enforcement Program (PEP).
The new policy, Baker noted to the Herald, is intended to focus on criminals who “pose a significant threat.”
Indeed, the Obama administration’s interior immigration enforcement strategy under PEP has been fashioned to largely only enforce immigration law against illegal immigrants who commit sufficiently heinous crimes.
“This was about working collaboratively,” the newspaper quotes Baker, “that if there were people who had engaged in criminal activity, that the connectivity between the state and the feds would be there to ensure that we didn’t miss opportunities to remove them.”
While the state police will now be able to hold a deportable criminal alien for immigration authorities for up to 48 hours, they still will be barred from inquiring about an individuals immigration status.
Massachusetts Sen. President Stanley Rosenberg, a Democrat, criticized the move in an interview with Herald Radio Thursday, arguing that the policy could lead to an unequal application of the law.
“We know there are communities who have voted to be ‘safe havens’ — sanctuary cities — so now you are going to have uneven application of the law,” Rosenberg said. “And one of the points of having a law is everybody understands the rules and they follow the rules and it’s the same and just because you cross the border into another community doesn’t mean you have a different law that really should be consistent law across the state, and even more across the country.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...migrants-feds/
