Judge: Immigration agents in R.I., Mass. broke law in arrests
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Senior U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf tells ICE director that authorities failed to follow procedures, including in the case of Providence woman Lilian Pahola Calderon Jimenez BOSTON — The people who enforce immigration law in Massachusetts and Rhode Island repeatedly broke the law earlier this year, a federal judge insisted Tuesday as he grilled witnesses in a lawsuit challenging their actions. Senior U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf challenged Thomas Brophy, the acting Boston field director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s removal operations, about how authorities had failed to follow their own procedures after they arrested undocumented immigrants when they showed up to federal offices to seek legal status. “You understand that I found you and the people you were acting in concert with acted illegally, and have also violated the law?” Wolf asked Brophy. “I do now, yes,” Brophy said. But the meticulous and detailed legal parrying became emotional when Wolf made Brophy watch a video of a former ICE detainee reuniting with her son after she was released from custody earlier this month. The reunion occurred soon after Wolf ruled that the government broke the law by not giving her a chance to submit information challenging her detention, as its own rules require it to do. In the video, Brazil native Lucimar de Souza and her American-citizen son sobbed and embraced after her release from jail in Boston; some in the courtroom Tuesday teared up, too, as they watched on a courtroom TV screen. “Do you see when you look at that video of Ms. de Souza that when the government breaks the law,” Wolf asked, “it can have profound human consequences?” The hearing Tuesday allowed Wolf to explore the facts in a lawsuit brought by immigrants who are subject to removal orders but are married to U.S. citizens, including de Souza and Rhode Island resident Lilian Pahola Calderon Jimenez. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Boston field office also covers Rhode Island. The federal government acknowledges that it broke some of its own internal rules in the de Souza case, but disagrees about the consequences. The judge said he was concerned that the feds may have also broken the law in other Rhode Island and Massachusetts cases. Calderon, a Providence resident and mother of two, is among a class of non-citizens who are married to U.S. citizens and are seeking a change of immigration status. The Trump administration’s policies, they argue, are an effort motivated by racial animus to drive out immigrants of color from the United States. Their rights are being violated by aggressive and unlawful efforts to detain and deport them while they try to work out their status, they argue. Calderon was arrested after she showed up to federal offices in Johnston in January to petition to stay in the United States by virtue of her marriage to her high school sweetheart. She was subject to a final removal order in 2002, when she was 15, but she did not leave. She spent almost a month in custody at the Suffolk County House of Correction in Boston after her arrest this year, but is now free without any conditions and attended Tuesday’s hearing with her husband. She watched as Brophy acknowledged under Wolf’s questioning she has no criminal record and is not a flight risk. Calderon was brought to the United States from Guatemala when she was 3 years old via the border with Mexico. Brophy testified that in mid-February, when he took over the Boston office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, he put a stop to arrests of undocumented immigrants when they showed up to Citizen and Immigration Services meetings — people like Calderon — unless they were a threat to the public or national security. Wolf will hold another day of testimony Wednesday. Wolf is known in equal measure for deeply exploring controversial topics — the hearings over the feds’ involvement with gangster Whitey Bulger in the late 1990s, for example — and for airing out issues for hours upon hours. Tuesday’s hearing lasted from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with an hour lunch break, much longer than the typical Boston federal court hearing. Calderon’s proposed class-action lawsuit is part of a constellation of litigation challenging the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown; Brophy, for one, acknowledged that some of the petitioners in the case probably wouldn’t have been targeted without President Trump rescinding Obama-era rules on immigration enforcement. The federal government has asked Wolf to dismiss the case, which it depicts as a way to cleverly evade laws that give it broad leeway on deportations. Wolf’s court isn’t the right place to have this dispute, the feds say. The judge has halted any action against the parties while the case is pending. Wolf questioned Brophy about whether the glare of the media and a class-action lawsuit was the real reason for ICE’s about-face on de Souza and Calderon. The de Souza story, for example, got broad media attention for its raw emotion, and for its Kafka-esque fact pattern: de Souza on April 23 was given a week to make a case to stay out of federal custody, but the government made a decision to keep her locked up just four days later, before her attorneys even had a chance to respond. Wolf ruled federal agents violated the law by flouting their own policies a number of times, and ICE officials soon released de Souza from custody. “Is it the practice of ICE to pay attention to cases and try to follow regulations only when there’s publicity in the media?” Wolf asked. “No, sir,” said Brophy. |