The eight weeks since George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis police custody have brought protests against police brutality, debates over police budgets and a race to pass police reform legislation on Beacon Hill.
The current debate over a trio of police reform bills leaves out a practice that Rep. Liz Miranda says disproportionately harms Black people in Massachusetts who were born outside the U.S.: federal immigration agents cooperating with local police and court officers to detain and deport people without legal immigration status.
“It’s been my hope since I got in the State House that we value immigrant lives as we value Black lives because many of the immigrant communities that are the most challenged, that most interact with police are Black immigrant communities,” the Boston Democrat said in an interview with MassLive. “They are not immigrants from European countries. They’re immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, Cape Verde, Ghana, the Caribbean.”
Miranda and the other lead sponsors of a bill that would limit cooperation between federal immigration agents and local officials said the favorable report of their bill last week gives them hope, but the bill’s movement comes two weeks before lawmakers traditionally close the two-year legislative session.
The bill faces other barriers: a coalition of staunch opponents who call it a “sanctuary state” bill that could prevent law enforcement officers from deporting public safety threats and a governor who raises similar criticisms with the proposal.
Beacon Hill is in an unprecedented position in the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. With two weeks before session ends, lawmakers have no fiscal 2021 budget and several priorities — including the latest omnibus bills on police reform — are still making their way through the House and Senate.
The Legislature could hold formal session beyond July 31 — and might need to do so for the budget — but doing so falls on an election year, which lawmakers typically like to spend the fall campaigning instead of legislating.
The Safe Communities Act does not fall on the list of high-priority bills legislative leaders have expressed interest in like the transportation bond package or police reform. The immigration bill has been the source of controversy in recent years, passing in the Senate but dying in the House and prompting a statement from the governor, who typically declines to weigh in on pending legislation.
“The safety and security of our communities is a top priority for our administration, and I oppose this bill that would prohibit law enforcement from enforcing bipartisan policies that have been in place for 10 years and prevented violent and dangerous convicted criminals from being released back onto our streets,” Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, said in a statement issued in June 2017. He said the bill would make Massachusetts a “sanctuary state.”
The bill, H.3573/S.1401, was re-filed this in early 2019 by Sen. Jamie Eldridge, an Action Democrat. The House version was filed by Rep. Ruth Balser, a Newton Democrat, and Miranda. The proposal received a favorable report from the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security.
The legislation bans 287(g) agreements, in which local and state officers are trained by federal agents to enforce immigration laws. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has these agreements with the state Department of Correction, the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office, Bristol County Sheriff’s Office and Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office.
Local law enforcement could not contact ICE about someone leaving their custody unless they’re incarcerated people finishing up a criminal sentence.
The bill would also bar police and court officers from asking about a person’s immigration status and require that immigrants who are arrested get their “Miranda” rights read to them before being interviewed by ICE.
Asked last week if his position on the bill had changed, Gov. Charlie Baker said no before ending his news conference on COVID-19 updates.
Balser called the governor’s stance disappointing and said dismisses the medical community’s advice, referring to the backing by the Massachusetts Medical Society. Over the past year, doctors and immigration advocates have said multi-jurisdictional immigration enforcement deters people from seeking crucial medical help, reporting domestic violence and calling 911 on other crimes.
“I would just start with calling on the governor to listen more,” Balser said.
Miranda said perhaps the governor could be persuaded if more constituents express their support.
“I think people who believe in this and immigrant communities need to call our governor. They need to let him know why it’s important,” she said. “He can’t keep hearing from just one perspective.”
Before the bill could get to the governor’s desk, it would need to be approved by the House and Senate. Neither the House nor Senate leaders have flagged the Safe Communities Act as a priority for the session that traditionally ends on July 31. The Legislature has several unresolved bills on transportation, health care and, perhaps the most contentious yet, police accountability.
“I really would hope that it would be taken up soon,” Eldridge said. “Given the House did not support the Safe Communities Act last session, I would hope they would take that up first.”
“I am hoping that the House will take this bill up and will move it out of Ways and Means and bring it to the house floor in the next two weeks,” Balser said. “I think it’s really an important bill and particularly important now more than ever because of the global pandemic that we’re dealing with. I think communities where many immigrants live were hit particularly hard.”
Massachusetts is home to an estimated 185,000 undocumented immigrants, according to the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, a liberal think tank. More than one-third have lived in the U.S. for five years or more.
The number of immigrants without legal status could be higher, but an exact count does not exist.
Federal immigration officials said local “sanctuary” ordinances have in part driven the number of apprehensions down in New England. ICE’s Boston division, which oversees six states, made 2,469 administrative arrests in fiscal 2019, about 15% lower than the previous year. The agency also saw a 5% drop in deportations.
“Any time a politician or an elected official uses law enforcement as a political tool, it puts the whole community in danger,” Marcos D. Charles, acting field director of Enforcement and Removal Operations, said in an interview in December. “By limiting law enforcement’s ability, they are directly affecting the safety of the community.”
Both immigration advocates and some law enforcement officials argue against cooperation between federal immigration agents and local officials, in part because people have been deported over criminal charges they didn’t get a chance to fight.
Nearly one-fourth of all administrative arrests by ICE nationwide were for people with pending criminal charges, according to the report of local statistics. The report did not include a state-by-state breakdown.
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins has argued the deportations not only prevent undocumented immigrants from having their day in court, but prevents victims of crimes committed by those immigrants of getting justice if the person could have been found guilty and sentenced. Instead, that person may be free outside of the United States, rather than behind bars.
The contention over multi-jurisdictional immigration enforcement reared its head in the debate over police reforms lawmakers are reviewing. House leaders received thousands of pieces of testimony on the Senate policing bill, including several opposed to a provision barring school resource officers from reporting student information such as immigration status and incidents to gang databases and other agencies.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization that seeks to limit immigration into the United States, said provisions for community policing in the bill would be “shielding criminal aliens under the guise that those in the country illegally will not feel comfortable reporting crimes or acting as witnesses to a crime.”
Miranda, the Boston representative, said state leaders need to hear from constituents who represent immigrant communities, but the biggest hurdle remains the lack of time left in the legislative session.
“In this unique climate, that we’ve been forced to move fast, and I think it’s the right decision to move fast because our communities can’t wait. We’ve never gotten our fair share in resources,” Miranda said.
“I hope my colleagues understand that as they’ve learned about Black Lives Matter and want to be supportive that there are Black immigrants that are going through multiple pandemics at once,” she added, “and we need to alleviate that.”