Medford resident; staff counsel and community advocate for the ACLU of Massachusetts

An individual’s right to go to court is one of our basic rights in the United States. It serves as a foundation that helps guarantee the other core constitutional rights that we enjoy, including due process and equal protection of the law. Courts are the place where people ask for protection, work out family issues, and seek justice. But for courts to function fairly and properly, people need to feel safe going to them.

Immigration arrests at courthouses generate fear and mistrust. That only undermines the ability of the judiciary, law enforcement, survivors’ services, public defenders, and other core functions of a just society to carry out their essential work in courthouse buildings.


A 2018 study by the American Civil Liberties Union found that since President Trump took office the previous year, immigration enforcement officers from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Customs and Border Protection had “dramatically increased their presence at criminal and civil courts, including in family, landlord-tenant, and traffic courts across the United States.”

The study shows that this trend negatively affects public safety for all of us. It cites a survey of judges, police, prosecutors, and victim advocates and attorneys that shows fear of deportation — heightened by immigration arrests in courthouses — deters many immigrants from reporting crimes or taking part in court proceedings.

Of the judges surveyed, 54 percent reported that court cases were interrupted because an immigrant crime survivor was afraid to come to court. Additionally, 82 percent of prosecutors surveyed said that domestic violence has become increasingly under-reported or harder to investigate and prosecute since President Trump assumed office in 2017. That impacts all of us.

It’s simple: We can’t have a working justice system when people don’t feel safe going to court.


In June, a federal judge temporarily blocked ICE from making civil arrests at Massachusetts courthouses; this ruling is an important step forward in ensuring Massachusetts courts remain a place of redress and justice for all. But Massachusetts must continue to do all that it can to protect immigrants’ right to access the justice system and build trust and relationships with the immigrant community.

Jessica Vaughan Leslie B. Vaughan, Jr.

NO

Jessica Vaughan

North Attleborough resident; director of policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank that favors less immigration

Federal immigration authorities certainly should not be barred from making arrests in courthouses. The campaign to block US Immigration and Customs Enforcement from courthouses is flagrant political interference with an important constitutional law enforcement activity.

Immigration laws are not trivial statutes unworthy of enforcement. They maintain the integrity of our legal immigration system, preserve job opportunities for legal workers, and protect our communities and our country by excluding foreign criminals and other security threats.

ICE would much rather arrest its targets in jails or local police lock-ups, where many of them are discovered, but in Boston and other places with strict sanctuary policies, police cooperation is limited. Moreover, a controversial 2017 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling required all state law enforcement agencies to cease honoring ICE warrants to hold deportable aliens in custody.

ICE courthouse arrests are relatively rare, occurring just a couple of times a week across the state. The targets are priority cases, typically criminals or egregious immigration scofflaws. If ICE cannot arrest these individuals in the safe environment of a courthouse, then ICE has to do it at their dwellings, workplaces, or other public places. This is dangerous for ICE officers and the public, and is upsetting to some communities.


Critics of immigration enforcement have contrived various reasons to justify barring ICE from courthouses, for example emphasizing that immigration violations are usually civil, not criminal. So what? Civil commitment orders routinely occur in Massachusetts courthouses; in fiscal 2018, there were 5,716 cases in which individuals were ordered confined for substance abuse treatment. In truth, ICE is being singled out for inappropriate interference.

As for claims that fear of arrest is causing immigrants to avoid courthouses and preventing access to justice, ICE is not keeping anyone from attending court business, and crime victims are never targets for deportation. Sadly, the fear is being stoked by ICE critics, not by ICE actions.

As long as there are sanctuary policies, whether imposed by local leaders, state justices, or ballot measures, federal immigration officers must keep doing their jobs in the safest place possible, and that is likely to be a courthouse.

This is not a scientific survey. Please only vote once.

As told to Globe correspondent John Laidler. To suggest a topic, please contact laidler@globe.com.