Local law enforcement is cooperating with federal immigration authorities in more ways than previously disclosed, public documents reviewed by GBH News show.
More than 60 public records obtained by the social services nonprofit Citizens for Juvenile Justice and shared with GBH News show that local officers have shared immigrants’ identities and locations with federal immigration authorities while they’re in custody. The extent of that communication varies. In some instances, local police, sheriffs and district attorneys shared data from routine processes like fingerprinting, while other records show staffers reaching out to ask deportation officers to take special interest in a case.
In most instances, the sharing of information doesn’t violate any state law or local policy. But activists and attorneys that say that giving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement details to find immigrants who have been charged with crimes violates due process rights, and robs potential victims of their days in court.
Joshua Dankoff, director of strategic initiatives at Citizens for Juvenile Justice, took an interest in compiling the data as youth were being detained by ICE last year. He said that communities vary widely on how much they restrict information sharing.
“You have some ... police departments that have really wide-open doors in terms of the communication. You know, they might say, 'We really care about our immigrant neighbors, but on these six examples, we will share information.’ ... I think the real policy is in those exemptions,” he said.
Dankoff said that while many local sanctuary-aligned policies are well-meaning, they don’t address every situation.
“Are we okay having our local justice agencies, being complicit with the federal immigration crackdown?” he said. “It is our own justice system, our own police departments that are making decisions, individual police officers sometimes making decisions that honestly are not for them to make.”
Policies labelled as “anti-ICE” generally fall into three categories. One type is ending partnerships with ICE that delegate immigration enforcement authority to local law enforcement, called 287(g) agreements. Another is having local policies that restrict city staff and police from volunteering information to ICE, earning those municipalities the often-inaccurate “sanctuary city” label. A third is where local authorities refuse to hold someone for additional time solely on the basis of an ICE detainer, a practice that was found unlawful by the state’s highest court under the Lunn decision, a court case commonly referenced by law enforcement.
Only one 287(g) agreement exists with the Department of Correction. So-called sanctuary policies are a patchwork with subtle exemptions. So the onus of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy often falls to information-sharing between local police, district attorney, and county sheriff offices.
“What we think is really important for people to understand when we talk about ICE is there are two arms of ICE,” said Fatema Ahmad, executive director of Muslim Justice League, a civil and immigrant rights–focused nonprofit. “And traditionally, sanctuary policies only focus on ICE ERO, which is like the enforcement removal operations arm.” She added that law enforcement often contact ICE’s other arm, Homeland Security Investigations, for criminal investigations. Even Boston works with those federal authorities, despite being dubbed a sanctuary city.
“So when people say our police department doesn’t work with ICE, that’s just not true. There’s no city in the country where they would never work with ICE,” said Ahmad.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t return requests for comment.
‘In hopes that ICE can make an arrest’
Dankoff received records from many local police departments that illustrate the complexity of how officers interact with immigration authorities — and, in some cases, how a lack of clear standards permits officers to make their own judgment calls.
In Chicopee, for example, the local police policy manual says officers shouldn’t detain any individual for a civil violation of federal immigration laws, and they can’t detain someone over unresolved questions of their status. But the policy does allow an officer to detain a person while they contact immigration authorities if the officer has “reasonable suspicion” that the individual violated federal immigration law.
“If the officer has facts that establish probable cause to believe that a person already lawfully detained has committed a criminal immigration offense, he/she may continue the detention and may request a federal immigration official to respond to the location to take custody of the detained person.”Chicopee Police Department policy
Dankoff said the Chicopee policy empowers local police to analyze and determine whether someone has violated an immigration law.
“I would say out of all of the policies that I’ve looked at, this one right here appears to be the most in violation of Commonwealth v. Lunn, which is the Supreme Judicial Court case about telling police departments and sheriff’s departments that they cannot hold people strictly on immigration violations. If they’re going to detain someone, it has to be based on Massachusetts law,” he said. ”
The Chicopee police department didn’t reply to request for comment on the policy.
Other law enforcement officials have taken more direct approaches.
In Hampden County, an assistant district attorney for the special victims unit reached out to a deportation officer at ICE’s regional office on Feb. 5, 2025.
The assistant district attorney wrote that she was prosecuting a defendant in Springfield District Court who was alleged to have solicited a 15-year-old child for sex. She said she had an FBI report indicating the person wasn’t in the U.S. legally and appeared to be subject for removal proceedings. That Hampden assistant district attorney went on to say that she spoke with a “DHS agent” one evening and mentioned the man was schedule in court for a plea hearing, which would be continued to another date.
“I do not know if a detainer has already been lodged. I want to provide the latest information about his new plea hearing date in hopes that ICE can make an arrest,” she wrote.
No further response was shown in the public records shared with Dankoff. Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni didn’t respond to requests for comment about the situation, and whether the individual was detained.
Dankoff said this is an example of a serious charge — enticement of a child under 16 for sexual activity — that should be tried in court in Massachusetts, where the alleged crime occurred. “I don’t think it’s actually probably in the victim’s best interest to have this person just taken away and arrested and deported by ICE,” he said.
Suffolk County sheriff’s office ended its contract to hold ICE detainees in 2019. However, communication with the agency has continued, as demonstrated by one email chain.
On April 14, 2025, Stephen Majeski, a deportation officer with ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, requested a “list of all sentenced inmates in the facility.” The email didn’t say if he meant Nashua Street Jail or Suffolk House of Correction. But 12 minutes later, Elizabeth Conley, chief administrative assistant at Suffolk County sheriff’s office, provided the list in an attachment.
Asked about the incident, if any of the listed individuals had been taken into federal custody, and how ICE detentions before sentencing impacts ability to prosecute crimes, the sheriff’s office spokesperson Peter Van Delft responded: “In the service of maintaining professional working relationships as we do with all of our fellow law enforcement agencies, the Department attempts to respond to all such requests in a timely fashion. The Department complied with the aforementioned requested list of sentenced people, however any further information about detention or prosecution should be forwarded directly to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
Van Delft said that the department “adheres to federal, state and local law in relation to Lunn v Commonwealth, which clearly states that state and local law enforcement agencies are legally prohibited from arresting or detaining people based solely on the existence of an ICE detainer.” He said the department doesn’t hold anyone longer than their sentence prescribes.
Some lawyers and advocates have witnessed the immediate repercussions of local law enforcement tipping off ICE about an immigrant’s release or court appearance.
Katy Naples-Mitchell, program director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School, has reviewed Dankoff’s data and called it “unsurprising.” Naples-Mitchell spends time as a pro bono attorney at South Bay Jail, aka Suffolk House of Correction. She was conducting an unrelated legal visit on a recent Friday when a family walked in to pay bail for a family member, and were given a receipt by the clerk magistrate.
“Their loved one never came out. Because instead, ICE had been alerted by the jail that this person was releasable, and so immediately upon the bail having been paid— making the person released from state custody— ICE enacted their federal detainer, and took the person into federal custody,” she said.
The family, she said, told her the woman who was detained had a green card with no active order of removal.
“ICE enacted their federal detainer. Instead — they were disappeared behind the jail,” she said.
