City Council Members Push Top State Judge To Bar ICE From Courts

NEW YORK, NY — More than half the City Council last week joined calls for the state's top judge to bar immigration authorities from local courthouses, which the agency overseeing the courts says would be illegal.

Twenty-eight City Council members — including Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) — sent a letter Friday asking Chief Judge Janet DiFiore to ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering state-run courthouses, where agents have taken to arresting immigrants for possible deportation.

As other officials and activists have argued, the letter says the arrests hurt the functioning of the city's justice system and "degrade the constitutional rights of litigants and their lawyers." Public Advocate Letitia James, City Comptroller Scott Stringer and four of the city's five borough presidents also signed on.

"We urge you to protect the interests of our constituents and people throughout New York State, to protect the justice system’s integrity, and to end the ICE presence in our courts," says the letter to DiFiore, also signed by

Unlike churches and schools, ICE does not consider courts to be "sensitive locations" where its officers do not go. Immigrant-rights activists have sounded the alarm about courthouses arrests since they started occurring more frequently last year under President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

There were 97 successful and attempted ICE arrests in or around New York City courthouses in 2017 and 14 more so far this year, up from just 11 in 2016, according to the Immigrant Defense Project, an advocacy group.

The Council members' letter condemns ICE's practice of arresting immigrants at family courts and other non-criminal courts. But ICE issued a formal policy directive last month saying agents should "generally avoid" those courts except in special circumstances. It also says ICE will not arrest any immigrants who appear in court as witnesses to crimes or who accompany people who are targeted for arrest.

The Office of Court Administration, which oversees local state-run courthouses, cannot legally "shut down a public building to law enforcement," and no other state has done so. OCA spokesman Lucian Chalfen said Tuesday.

Chalfen said ICE's policy on arrests at non-criminal courts was a "direct result" of state court officials raising concerns about the practice with regional and national ICE officials.

"We will continue to request that they treat all courthouses as sensitive locations, and will continue to raise these issues with ICE officials as we continue to ensure that any activity by outside law enforcement agencies does not cause disruption or compromise Court operations," Chalfen said in an email.

DiFiore's counterpart in California, Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, wrote an open letter last March to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly asking that ICE agents stop "stalking courthouses and arresting undocumented immigrants."

OCA protocol requires ICE agents to alert court officers when they arrive to make an arrest and bars them from making arrests inside courtrooms. ICE's policy similarly says its agents should arrest immigrants "in collaboration with court security staff" in areas that aren't accessible to the public.

But ICE has said that courthouse arrests are generally safer for its agents and immigrants alike because everyone entering a court is screened for weapons.

The practice is also sometimes necessary because some so-called sanctuary cities — like New York City — bar ICE agents from local jails and prisons, ICE's policy says.

"Federal, state, and local law enforcement officials routinely engage in enforcement activity in courthouses throughout the country because many individuals appearing in courthouses for one matter are wanted for unrelated criminal or civil violations," the policy reads. "ICE’s enforcement activities in these same courthouses are wholly consistent with longstanding law enforcement practices, nationwide."

(Lead image: City Council Speaker Corey Johnson speaks during a meeting on Feb. 15. Photo by John McCarten/New York City Council)