Advocates push for juvenile fingerprint data sharing to end, as ICE detains Chelsea teens

In Chelsea, at least five minors who were recently arrested by the Chelsea Police Department were detained by federal immigration authorities after their release from police custody. The similarities of these incidents have many in the community feeling extreme distress.

In Massachusetts, it’s standard practice for police to collect fingerprints of the people they arrest, and share those fingerprints to a database with the FBI.

“Chelsea Police was basically following protocol and doing exactly what Chelsea Police has been doing for a long time,” said City Manager Fidel Maltez. “What was really different is that in those instances in May, we received a call from immigration, from ICE, who showed up to our police station.”

Tom Nolan, a former Boston Police Department lieutenant and current criminal justice professor at several universities, said all types of federal agents are now assisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in detention operations.

“If they [the FBI] hadn’t been sharing the information during previous administration or in previous years, it appears as though they’re doing so now,” Nolan said.

ICE didn’t return requests for comment for this story.

The cases in Chelsea

On May 8, three teenagers were playing with BB guns in public and a neighbor called Chelsea Police Department, who arrested the minors. When family members arrived to the station, police released the youth. ICE agents were present and detained all three, and also the father of one of the children in front of the police station.

On May 14, three students were arrested after an incident at Chelsea High School. Two of those students were later detained by ICE at the Chelsea Police Station. All students in both incidents were between the ages of 15 and 16, say advocates.

Kathryn Anderson, president of the Chelsea Teachers Union, and a special education teacher at the Brown Middle School in Chelsea, said the school district has to follow requirements for reporting incidents to the police, including weapons, illegal substances and fights that result in serious bodily harm.

“If the police then decide to move forward with an arrest, those fingerprints are sent,” she said. “It’s not that the school district is choosing to do this.”

Educators say more detentions have occurred as a result of the fingerprinting, but these are the most well-known. In one instance, ICE agents arrested the teens within 90 minutes of when they were fingerprinted.

What the law says

City Manager Maltez and criminal justice professor Nolan both reiterated Chelsea’s stance as a sanctuary city, which limits the local police department’s cooperation with federal authorities in immigration enforcement.

“I am expecting and hoping that Chelsea PD is not directly sharing information with ICE, because that would be a violation of Chelsea’s sanctuary city policy,” said Nolan, when discussing the less than two-hour timeframe from which some minors were fingerprinted to when they were detained by ICE.

The Chelsea Police Department didn’t respond to request for comment and questions about whether it has the power to stop sharing minors’ fingerprint data with the FBI. However, there’s no state law that requires it. State law only requires local fingerprint data be shared with the Massachusetts State Police, and only for felonies. There is no federal law requiring local police share their fingerprint data with the FBI either.

“I am not aware nor have I ever heard of any requirement that local police share fingerprints with the FBI,” said Kade Crockford, director of the ACLU of Massachusetts’ Technology for Liberty Project.

Still, that’s been the practice.

“Local police departments are generally loathe to not share information with the FBI, because they want to know who’s in their custody,” Crockford explained. “I mean, from their perspective, they would tell you, well, 'What if this person who we’ve just arrested is wanted for a very serious crime in another jurisdiction?”

Crockford said there’s been a shift in priorities from the White House. Even though fingerprint data was shared under President Joe Biden, his administrations didn’t want to go after every immigrant who came into contact with the criminal justice system. That’s changed under President Donald Trump. Crockford said police departments could choose to stop sharing fingerprints with the FBI altogether, and share only with state police in felony cases, as the law requires. “They could do that if they wanted to for anyone — for juveniles, for adults, whatever,” Crockford said.

An FBI spokesperson told GBH News that it shares fingerprint data with the Department of Homeland Security. The spokesperson said that since 2014, “all criminal submissions submitted to the FBI’s Next Generation Identification System are required by law to be sent to the DHS Automated Biometric Identification System for admissibility or deportability determinations.”

Impact on community, and the usual judicial process

Gladys Vega, executive director of La Colaborativa, said the situation has eroded the trust the organization has built among law enforcement agencies and the immigrant community.

“When these are small offense that are low-level misdemeanor or non-violent, I feel that ICE shouldn’t have a role. And that is why we need to prevent that data sharing with federal immigration enforcement when it’s about juveniles,” Vega said.

Joshua Dankoff, director of strategic initiatives at Citizens for Juvenile Justice, an organization that advocates for youth, said fingerprint data sharing is taking power away from state and juvenile courts.

“ICE is taking children into detention just at the point of arrest — they haven’t been proven guilty — they haven’t been adjudicated delinquents,” he said. The better method, he said, would be to have young people accused of breaking the law go through the standard judicial process locally.

In states like Illinois and New York, fingerprints of minors can’t be shared with those federal entities. In municipalities, the kids would likely end up in diversion programs, and handle without other authorities.

Advocates say fingerprint data sharing is an urgent issue.

House Bill 1657 and Senate Bill 1058 would change Massachusetts state law so that if a minor is arrested, their fingerprints won’t be shared. It wouldn’t change the process for adults.

“That would mean that for these five kids, they made a mistake. They did something that resulted in their arrest in their community, but then it can be addressed fully within the community. They can stay with their families. Their families don’t have to worry about their increased exposure to detention,” said Anderson of the teacher’s union.

Advocates testified before the Joint Committee for the Judiciary last week, seeking to advance the legislation.

“This raises a concern for me,” said La Colaborativa youth worker Michael Senabria, a class of 2025 high school graduate. “I believe that a small mistake or even misunderstanding could lead to my friends or families to be in a system that ICE can access.”

Mayra Balderas, a member of the Chelsea school committee, told the committee the purpose of current fingerprinting protocol is to notify the federal government if anyone, including a minor, has committed a crime across state lines.

“Minors are not the ones who are doing that. That’s adults. So I don’t think that it adds any value to public safety,” she said. All it does it does is put kids at risk of deportation and their families.”