How Massachusetts can limit ICE enforcement – The Boston Globe

Plymouth County Correctional Facility currently holds about 350 detainees on behalf of ICE, marking a sharp increase over the past year. Absent state intervention, the detained population at Plymouth will likely continue to grow under the Trump administration. Sheriff Joseph McDonald recently renewed the county’s contract with ICE for five more years, despite mounting reports of flagrant human rights abuses — including allegations of unsanitary conditions, abusive staff, overcrowding, rotten food, and inadequate health care.

Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren are aware of the abysmal conditions at Plymouth, and have spoken out against the jail’s continued failure to abide by detention standards. The jail is currently under review by the attorney general. As long as there are ICE beds to fill at Plymouth, immigration detention will continue.

Though some have characterized Massachusetts as a sanctuary state, gaps between statewide laws and city policies remain vulnerable to exploitation in service of mass deportation. For example, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center — a fusion center enabling extensive information sharing between federal immigration authorities and local law enforcement — easily sidesteps toothless commitments to non-cooperation. Between 2014 and 2017, the BRIC reported 135 children to ICE after incidents at school, putting them at serious risk of deportation. Ending, or at least vastly limiting, the scope of the BRIC is a concrete step that state and local leaders can take to stymie the information sharing that inevitably leads to detention and deportation.

Three quarters of ICE arrests in the interior of the United States happen as a result of interactions with the criminal legal system. Though a handful of sanctuary cities exist in the Commonwealth, and though case law prohibits law enforcement from holding noncitizens solely on the basis of an ICE detainer, nothing prevents a local sheriff’s office or state prosecutor from notifying ICE of a noncitizen in their custody or courtroom. Elected officials must instruct district attorneys, sheriffs, police chiefs, and other law enforcement officials that they are not to communicate with ICE regarding noncitizens’ presence in jails or courtrooms.

Moreover, guidance should be provided to district attorney offices to encourage non-prosecution and reduced sentences where possible, to avoid deportation consequences. Healey can also grant pardons to protect longtime residents whose state criminal convictions make them deportable, in consideration of their records of rehabilitation, contributions, and roots in the state.

Finally, Massachusetts must reinstate the state’s right-to-shelter law for all residents. The pipeline from homelessness to deportation is well documented. Healey should reverse her recent decision to impose a strict six-month limit on family stays in shelters. The families in shelters have fled violence, poverty, civil strife, and natural disasters; they are traumatized and struggling to find safety and stability. Unhoused families living on the streets of Massachusetts will be sitting ducks for ICE enforcement efforts under Trump. State leaders can take steps now to protect these families from deportation by reinstating the availability of stable, long-term shelter.

As elected officials consider how to make good on their promises to push back against an increasingly hostile Trump agenda, they should implement these four recommendations. Absent concrete, immediate actions at the state and local level, noncitizen community members in Massachusetts will remain at significant risk of detention, deportation, and family separation.

Sarah Sherman-Stokes is a clinical associate professor of law and associate director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic at Boston University School of Law. Leah Hastings is a staff attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, where she runs the Immigrant Detention Conditions Project.