With new legislation aimed at curbing ICE activity in Massachusetts now pending on Beacon Hill, a pair of lawyers who work with immigrants are offering up their ideas for additional steps the state can take.
Gov. Maura Healey filed a bill last week seeking to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement from making arrests in courthouses, schools, day cares, hospitals and health clinics. She also signed an executive order restricting state agencies from entering into new partnerships with ICE that delegate immigration enforcement authority to local law enforcement, known as 287(g) agreements.
But in an appearance on Boston Public Radio Monday, Leah Hastings of Prisoners’ Legal Services and Sarah Sherman-Stokes from the Boston University School of Law said there’s more Massachusetts can do.
Sherman-Stokes, associate director of BU Law’s Immigrants’ Rights & Human Trafficking Clinic, said that, along with limiting future 287(g) agreements, she’d like to see Healey cancel the existing agreement between the state Department of Correction and ICE.
“We have a criminal legal system. Just because people have interacted with the criminal legal systems doesn’t mean that they should be deprived of dignity,” Sherman-Stokes said. “It doesn’t mean they should be deprived of due process. It doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to stay here and make a life with their families in Massachusetts.”
Healey said last week that she supports the Department of Correction’s agreement.
“This is prison, and I think it is appropriate to have an agreement that says, look, if you’re here undocumented, you commit a crime, you’re prosecuted, and you’re sentenced to prison in the Department of Correction, at the end of that sentence, OK, I think it is appropriate for our Department of Correction to notify ICE ... and to give ICE the opportunity to take into custody and deport that individual,” she said.
Hastings, who runs the Immigrant Detention Conditions Project at Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, said the step she most wants to see state leaders take is to “end the fusion centers.” Fusion centers enable information-sharing between local law enforcement and federal authorities, including ICE.
There are two fusion centers in Massachusetts, the Commonwealth Fusion Center within the State Police and the Boston Regional Intelligence Center.
“This directly feeds people into the deportation machine,” Sherman-Stokes said. “If we really cared about communities of colors being targeted by ICE, we would end the BRIC.”
The conversation comes as state representatives are set to meet privately this week to discuss bills dealing with immigration policy. Lawmakers in the Massachusetts House and Senate will have a chance to amend Healey’s proposal, deciding whether to drop any pieces from her plan or insert additional measures.
Healey attached her new ICE legislation to a time-sensitive spending bill she wants passed by April 30, meaning it could come up for debate relatively soon.
