Cooperation between local law enforcement and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have alarmed immigrants across communities in the Northeast.
In North Adams, Mass., federal police grants under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Formula Grant program have sparked concern, because this year, the grants initially came with immigration-related conditions attached. The conditions were struck down by a federal court in Rhode Island today, but the North Adams City Council will vote on approving the funding on Nov. 10.
WAMC’s Maryam Ahmad spoke to The Berkshire Eagle's Izzy Bryars about why these grants drew such vocal protest from community members at city council meetings.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Bryars: One administration, for example, can slightly tweak the terms, and most of the time, we don't ever really hear anything about that because, obviously, it's not asking for you to share data to ICE. People did notice that in July these terms changed officially, and specifically these four terms that people are really concerned about, they now appear to prohibit restricting data sharing with ICE.
So, people showed up to North Adams to express that they were very concerned about that, and that on top of their moral concerns with cooperating with ICE, they also thought, “Hey, this conflicts with the Protect Act that Massachusetts just signed this year.” Basically, what the police department was saying was that, “Oh, we don't have to cooperate with these terms because they are unconstitutional and it goes against the Protect Act. So even if we do accept these grants, they're not going to come after us. We don't have to do anything. It's very unlikely that we would be subject to any sort of lawsuit or legal issue.” But city councilors were basically like, “That's just not a…the public seems so upset with this.” And the implication that you could potentially be required to share your data to help federal immigration officials, people were just so concerned that even the idea of that, that they were like, "Why take the risk in accepting this grant?"
Ahmad: What specifically does this grant cover for North Adams? What does it mean for them right now?
Bryars: So this would allow for upgrades to their evidence room. Basically, they have sort of a less-than-ideal police department that they're renting. They're trying to get a new building, and they hope to get their evidence room up to state accreditation standards. So it wouldn't even be replacing the room. It would be adding, you know, lock boxes for evidence, and, not to say that the department is up to date now, but it would be getting up to even more standards that they're hoping for.
And when [the] North Adams City Attorney came to City Council at the request of the council after they were like, “We need a legal opinion…will we get sued if we accept these terms and then not follow them?” The attorney was basically like, “That would be very unlikely, but not impossible.” And his understanding was also that, based on the actual wording of the grant, the terms apply only to the activity in the grant.
That again did not soothe people because they felt that the current federal administration isn't super interested in following legal precedent, or concerned that everything from before says that, “oh you know it just applies to this evidence room.” And then there was the even greater concern: can they then get evidence for certain cases relating to ICE with immigration officials? Does that then mean that theoretically, one of the counselors asked, they would then have access to your evidence room? You know, is that not what this means?
Ahmad: Another thing that I wanted to get a sense of is: how is this scope of cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE causing concern among residents? You mentioned that this particular grant got a lot of pushback from the public, and this is what city councilors were echoing. What has that kind of concern looked like in the Berkshires and the region that you cover?
Bryars: The point that a lot of people were making in North Adams and in Pittsfield is just the risk versus reward. They felt like, the $14,000, in accepting it, the risk of potential litigation and maybe somebody getting detained, and then also the biggest thing I think that people were the most concerned about that they said was: public trust on the line…having the police accept this grant, having Council accept this grant, regardless of the fact that a bunch of people showed up.
Ahmad: On that note, what have you been hearing at all in your coverage of this issue from immigrant communities themselves?
Bryars: Immigrants specifically, who spoke at city council, made it very clear that they just would not be comfortable talking or cooperating with the police if these grants were signed just because of these terms. I think that's the biggest thing to emphasize - that it just makes people fearful to interact with the police. And this is another thing that people said repeatedly: that they trusted their local police department, but it was the federal government that they didn't trust, and it just wasn't something they wanted to risk.
Ahmad: We've seen even in our region kind of a concern about what exactly this cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE would look like. New York also passed something similar to the Protect Act, which is a ban on 287(g) agreements. What are you watching next on this issue?
Bryars: So, what will happen at council next is they've postponed the vote again about whether or not they are going to accept the grant, and they wanted to wait until they got this letter from the attorney general's office in Massachusetts that is called a ‘reservation of rights,’ where they accept the grant, they attach this letter to the grant that says, “There's this ongoing lawsuit; we're not following these terms.”
And this is what the AG instructed the city to do. And so they are postponing to see the reservation of rights letter with the grant application, and then they will again, for the fourth time, decide if they are going to accept it. The AG's office, in their letter to the city council, said that the federal government has told them that they will not be enforcing the 2025 terms. That did not include 2026, that's still being worked out.
