Courthouse confrontation

It happened two months ago in Lansing when, without notifying Lansing police or court officials, ICE agents showed up at Lansing’s 54-A District Court on the sixth floor of City Hall to arrest Argimiro Hernandez-Garcia, stoking fears among judges and activists that so-called halls of justice were becoming becoming entrapment sites.

On Jan. 26, Hernandez- Garcia was asked by a court security officer to step into the lobby of the court. Once there, two plainclothes agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement took him into custody.

“They were yelling at him,” says Carmen Benavides, wife of former Mayor Tony Benavides. She had accompanied Hernandez-Garcia, a friend and neighbor, on his trip to pay a traffic ticket.

“When I tried to find out who they were and what was happening, they screamed at me and told to me to sit down. I’ve never been screamed at like that before.”

And that’s when all the stories she heard about ICE actions came tumbling into her mind and she grew “angry.”

“How can this happen here?” she asks.

Since 2011, ICE has voluntarily restricted enforcement actions around what it has dubbed “sensitive areas.” These include schools, places of worship, hospitals and public rallies and demonstrations.

But courthouses are not on the list, and despite legal saber rattling from the ACLU, the federal agency has not formally moved to include the country’s judicial centers in the “sensitive areas” directive.

Court administrator Anethia Brewer said she doesn´t know if such arrests have occurred here before. But they are hardly unkown elsewhere.

Last year, the ACLU of Southern California applauded Department of Homeland Security and ICE officials for suspending arrests of undocumented immigrants in the courthouse of Kern County. But ACLU officials warned this use of courthouses was a common practice for DHS-ICE action.

“Unfortunately, what happened in Kern County is also taking place in other courthouses across the country,” Kate Desormeau, a staff attorney at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a press release in January of last year. “DHS should apply the Kern County policy nationwide and order all DHS personnel to refrain from conducting immigration enforcement actions on courthouse grounds, absent exigent circumstances. Every day people go to courts to participate in important legal matters — to get married, to seek child custody, to finalize adoption, to obtain life-saving protection from abusers or stalkers, to testify as victims or witnesses in criminal cases. People need to access the courts, without risking deportation. This is a matter of public safety, victim protection, and equal justice.”

Unfortunately, praise from the ACLU was short-lived. DHS- ICE allegedly began tracing undocumented workers from the courthouse, where they had paid traffic fines or appeared for other court matters, to their homes and workplaces. Then the federal authorities would arrest the immigrants.

The situation continues unresolved in Kern County — and it echoes many of the concerns Lansing officials have about DHS-ICE actions at the District Court.

“At the time of the arrest, ICE officers made the appropriate local notifications and effected the arrest consistent with current agency policies,” says Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for ICE in Detroit.

But that isn’t what Lansing officials say happened.

“The Lansing Police Department (LPD) was not notified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that they were going to conduct an enforcement action on Jan. 26th, 2015,” wrote Lansing Police Chief Michael Yankowski.

Judge Louise Alderson, chief judge of the 54-A District Court, said the court was not notified of any immigration action that day either.

As the ACLU in Southern California noted, such enforcement actions create unsafe zones for immigrants in places where they should feel the most safe — the courts. That increases the risk to public safety, ACLU officials said.

That jibes with concerns from a 2008 series of immigration raids in Lansing and East Lansing. Those widescale operations resulted in the arrest of 64 undocumented immigrants — rounded up in workplaces and residences in both cities. Police officials in both municipalities said they were never notified of the impending raids. City Council members said that was “a recipe for disaster.”

To be clear, Hernandez-Garcia is not a sympathetic character in this drama. Walls said he’s been deported from the U. S. twice — once in 1999 and again in 2008. He also says the man was convicted of driving under the influence in 2010, and federal authorities had an order for his removal from February.Hernandez-Garcia fits the priority enforcement target profile set by President Barack Obama’s November 2014 executive orders.

But safety for Lansing police, court officials and citizens is why Benavides has raised the alarm on this issue. She said she worries for Lansing police who may be called to respond should an ICE apprehension go wrong in District Court.

Alderson says she has no legal authority to require federal authorities to provide prior notification before using the court to apprehend undocumented immigrants. She says she hopes for a “partnership” with federal authorities to provide some advance warnings.

“I have had preliminary conversations with several representatives from DHS- ICE", Chief Yankowski said, "but no final conclusions or agreements were reached concerning any potential changes in federal policy."

The incident is under investigation by both City Council and the Mayor’s Office.

“Mayor Bernero is deeply concerned about the ICE enforcement incident that occurred at City Hall without prior notification of city or court officials,” said spokesman Randy Hannan. “The mayor is investigating all options to protect Lansing residents and promote justice.”

Council passed a resolution March 9 that calls for Mark Hamilton, the assistant field office director in Detroit, to meet with city officials. It also calls for establishing policies and protocols that “require agents whenever in a governmental facilities” to “notify local law enforcement” as well as requiring agents to treat the public with respect.

Some cities and states have resorted to creating their own legal safe zones from immigration actions. And that idea is on the table in Lansing as well. Such proposals have met with limited success in federal courts. But those cases revolved around government employees’ not being required to report undocumented persons or honor immigration holds for people in police custody. Policies to address the situation in Lansing would likely prove difficult to enforce.

“Opening discussions with ICE is the first step, whether toward pursuing the ‘sanctuary city’ concept or making City Hall a ‘safe zone’ or both,” Fourth Ward Councilwoman Jessica Yorko said. She serves on the Council’s Diversity and Inclusion Ad Hoc Committee, which took up Benavides’ concerns in February.

“We believe that it is extremely important that immigration work collaboratively with all law enforcement within our community,” said At-Large Councilwoman Carol Wood, who chairs the Diversity Committee. “Our goal would be to develop policies that showed a true understanding of each other´s needs and care for our residents. When there is a breakdown in communication, there is potential danger to our residents. We would hope that the federal government would be willing to make sure that these lines of communication are working at all times. We know that it did not work in January 2015.”

A letter was sent to Hamiliton in the Detroit office on March 10, and Wood said the city still has not heard whether he will come to a committee meeting.