By Hillary Chabot
Boston Herald
BOSTON, Mass. — Federal immigration officials confirmed that prisons and jails across the Bay State are housing illegal immigrants posing as legal citizens -- but said they are concerned a recent Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling may handicap their efforts to identify and deport people in custody.
“Immigration enforcement officers are aware of this issue, and this is why the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision is so terrible,” said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Shawn Neudauer yesterday.
The SJC ruled in July that state and local law enforcement officers don’t have the authority to hold or arrest someone solely on a civil immigration matter. A Herald story yesterday reported sheriffs’ concerns that large numbers of illegal immigrants behind bars may be be using the stolen identities of citizens -- raising the prospect they could be released into the United States instead of getting deported.
“The fact that Massachusetts limits cooperation with immigration authorities increases the likelihood of these illegal immigrants returning to local neighborhoods,” said Neudauer.
“We’re fully aware that this fraud is happening, which is why we have the document and benefit fraud task force to go after those with stolen identities and falsified documents,” he said. He said it is unclear how many such imposters are incarcerated in Massachusetts.
ICE officials arrested 50 people suspected of being illegal immigrants in the Bay State last week as part of a national sting called “Operation Safe City.” Federal immigration enforcement focused on cities and regions where they have been denied access to jails and prisons to interview suspected immigration violators or jurisdictions where ICE detainers are not honored.
Chris Fallon, spokesman for the state Department of Correction, didn’t directly respond to questions about illegal immigrants posing as legal citizens but stressed that the state prisons do their best to determine prisoners’ identities.
“The DOC fingerprints every new admission and we collect DNA that’s submitted to the Combined DNA Index System database,” said Fallon in a statement. “We also have a record of aliases used by inmates in our system.”
The Herald reported yesterday that Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson is moving to crack down on these impostors in his own jail. He plans to train his staff in a program created to identify illegal immigrants who’ve stolen identities to create fraudulent papers for themselves.
___
(c)2017 the Boston Herald