Moulton Leads Letter to DHS Condemning ICE Detention Practices at Government Offices
A full text of the letter can be found below.
The Honorable Kirstjen M. Nielsen
Secretary of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528
The Honorable Rebecca Adducci
Boston Field Office Director
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement
1000 District Avenue
Burlington, MA, 01803
Dear Secretary Nielsen and Director Adducci,
We write to express our deep concern about the recent reversal of a February 2018 directive halting the practice of detaining undocumented immigrants who appear at government offices for appointments. We are particularly concerned about the chilling effect the threat of detention will have on those who are working to resolve their immigration status with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). We urge you to reverse this decision and reinstate the February directive halting in-office arrests of those who do not pose a threat to public safety.
We all have an interest in bringing these individuals out of the shadows and under the law, so we should not be deterring them from utilizing the very process the federal government has established for this purpose. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should, as previous Boston ICE Field Office Interim Director Thomas Brophy said “focus on public safety,” and not conduct arrests at government offices “unless there [is] a threat to national security or public safety.” The fear of detention, regardless of how frequently it actually takes place, discourages members of our community from resolving their immigration status. There is a clear and compelling interest in encouraging the timely and proper resolution of ongoing cases with USCIS, and ICE should not hinder that effort.
Recognizing this interest does not, as you suggested in the recent comments to the Boston Globe, “exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.’’ Nor does this policy need to be justified as a “prioritization of enforcement resources.’’ Instead, ICE can and should rely on its “sensitive location” policy, avoiding enforcement at government appointments as it does for other important cultural and civic institutions. We have seen firsthand that ICE enforcement actions at USCIS offices are “causing significant disruption to the normal operations of the sensitive location.” We urge you to consider the negative consequences of these enforcement actions and restore the February directive as soon as possible.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Seth Moulton, James P. McGovern, Niki Tsongas, Richard E. Neal, Katherine Clark, Joseph P. Kennedy III, William R. Keating, Stephen F. Lynch, Mike Capuano