Immigrant advocates have filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the Nassau County Police Department arguing that its policy for holding prisoners who are targets of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers is unlawful.

The suit, filed Monday on behalf of the Central American Refugee Center and a 26-year-old immigrant woman who is identified in court papers as “Jane Doe,” alleges that the police department's decade-old policy of taking people into custody on the basis of an ICE warrant has created an environment of fear for the county's foreign-born population.

The advocates are employing an “innovative” line of attack to challenge the department's policy, said Elise Damas, an attorney for the Central American Refugee Center: They argue that the policy runs afoul of New York state law, an approach that was successful in a Massachusetts case in which the state's Supreme Judicial Court found that state and local officers lack the authority to make arrests based solely on ICE detainers.

In that case, Lunn v. Commonwealth, 477 Mass. 517, Massachusetts' high court found that court officers lack the authority under state statutes and under common law to make an arrest based on an ICE warrant and rejected the government's theory that officers had an inherent authority to act on ICE detainers.

“We've seen it work in other states and it's time to bring it to New York,” Damas said.
The plaintiffs argue that the department's policy violates New York Criminal Procedure Law Section 140.10, which states that an officer may make an arrest if he or she witnesses a crime being committed or has reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.

Under the department's policy, the plaintiffs said, police can make arrests without reasonable cause.

There are almost 297,000 foreign-born Nassau County residents, which makes up about a quarter of the county's population.

A spokeswoman for the Nassau County Police Department said it was made aware of the suit and said that the department does not inquire into a person's immigration status unless they have been arrested for a crime.

The Hofstra Law Clinic is representing the Central American Refugee Center in the suit.
The suit comes at a time of high anxiety for immigrants as President Donald Trump continues to advocate for “tough” immigration enforcement.

In New York, ICE agents continue to make arrests at courthouses, despite a call from Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez to put the practice to a stop.

Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, said on Monday that ICE agents have made 50 arrests at courthouses since the beginning of February, of which 38 were at courthouses in New York City.