Prosecutors from two of the state’s largest counties say they will work to preserve a ban on immigration authorities from arresting undocumented immigrants at Massachusetts courthouses, despite a federal appeals court decision Tuesday overturning a ruling to ban the practice.
“We are going to be moving forward on as many fronts as possible to protect people's right to access the courts,” Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said in an interview with GBH News Wednesday. “This is a setback, this is not a defeat.”
Tuesday's decision by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston overturned a June 2019 ruling by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani that banned U.S. Immigration and and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers from detaining people as they arrive or leave a courthouse.
Ryan said she plans to continue to work with Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins and public defenders for a permanent injunction that would ban courthouse arrests. The district attorneys said they are considering a variety of options to preserve the ban, including asking for the case to be heard again, and reconsidered, by the original trial court.
“This fight is far from over,” Rollins said in a statement. “We are absolutely on the right side of justice here. It is never a loss when you are fighting for human rights, justice and building a safer community.”
Iván Espinoza-Madrigal of the group Lawyers for Civil Rights said Wednesday they are weighing their options, including asking the appellate court to review the decision. The ban on courthouse arrests will remain in place for approximately two months before the new mandate is issued from the 1st U.S. Circuit Court. If a review is granted, it could be six months before ICE is legally able to detain immigrants leaving or entering a Massachusetts court.
“There are going to be no courthouse arrests happening in Massachusetts, at least for two months, if not longer,” Espinoza-Madrigal said in an interview with GBH News. “So we will continue to closely monitor the courthouses, because if an arrest is made, it would be illegal.”
Espinoza-Madrigal emphasized that there is no current threat of arrest for immigrants at courthouses. He said Lawyers for Civil Rights and other groups will do “everything in our power” to continue to uphold the 2019 ban.
Because the initial lawsuit leading to the 2019 ruling represented the first time in the country that prosecutors, public defenders and advocates filed a lawsuit to end courthouse ICE arrests, Espinoza-Madrigal argues that this area of the law is new and unexplored enough to merit a review of Tuesday’s decision.
“The dust here has not settled by any means,” he said. “This is going to be the subject of more appellate court litigation before we really get a final enforceable order one way or another.”
In its ruling, the 1st Circuit said that those who object to ICE conducting courthouse arrests failed to provide grounds that “ICE lacks statutory authority” to do so.
Ryan said she has been moved to see people carrying physical copies of the injunction as a form of protection at courthouses around the state. "That's how much it meant to them,” she said.
“It is really public safety in terms of, we need people to be able to access the protection of the courts,” Ryan continued. “People might need to go to court for any of a variety of things. They may be in a place where they witness something that we need them to come into court and testify to. We are all safer when people are free to come to court and exercise its protections without being afraid that the civil warrant might be executed against them.”
