Boston ICE agents had to arrest a Brazilian illegal immigrant charged with rape and extortion twice because of sanctuary policies in the state of Massachusetts.
An ICE statement published last week said that Boston Enforcement and Removal Operations officials arrested 29-year-old Agnaldo Moreira da Cruz, for the second time in December.
This came after officials in Barnstable County, in Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, twice ignored ICE detainer requests against Moreira da Cruz.
According to the ICE statement, the Barnstable County Superior Court not only ignored their detainer requests but also violated the terms of their own agreement by refusing to return Moreira da Cruz to ICE, after obtaining him through a “writ of habeas corpus.”
Moreira da Cruz was originally arrested in August 2023 by police in Yarmouth. He was arraigned in December 2023 and held at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility, which is run by the Barnstable Sheriff’s Office, until he was released on June 18, 2024, despite there being an ICE detainer against him.
ICE tracked down and arrested Moreira da Cruz several months later on Oct. 16 and, after receiving a habeas corpus request, had to again turn him over to the Barnstable Superior Court on Nov. 27. The court then ignored the ICE detainer and released him on Dec. 5.
Moreira da Cruz is charged with a series of violent felonies, including rape and extortion with threat of injury.
“This is not someone you want to release into the community, but twice now our detainers have been ignored,” said ICE. “These decisions have repeatedly put the citizens of Massachusetts at risk of being victimized by an alleged dangerous offender.”
Asked why the ICE detainer was not honored, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Trial Court sent Fox News Digital a copy of the policy followed by the court, which is based on a precedent set by a 2017 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling called “Lunn vs. Commonwealth.”
The policy stipulates that Trial Court employees “do not have authority to detain an individual based solely” on ICE detainers and those immigrants subject to these requests “shall be processed and handled in the same way that all other individuals coming before the court are processed and handled.”
The policy also states that no court officer or employee may “call or otherwise initiate communication with any ICE official” to notify them that an immigrant is in court custody and that “no ICE official shall be permitted to take an individual into custody pursuant to a civil immigration detainer in a courtroom.”
Barnstable Sheriff Donna Buckley told Fox News Digital that Lunn vs. Commonwealth makes it so that “it is unlawful for state and local law enforcement agencies to arrest or detain people solely on the basis of an ICE detainer, beyond the time that the individual would otherwise be entitled to be released from State custody.”
“The Massachusetts sheriffs operate within the scope and parameters of federal, state and local laws and regulations,” said Buckley. “As such, the sheriffs are bound to follow the law of the Commonwealth, and therefore cannot hold an individual based on an ICE detention request alone, if that incarcerated individual is not subject to separate judicially issued detention orders.”
“The sheriffs do not make the law. The sheriffs enforce the law,” she added.
Meanwhile, Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge and law and policy expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News Digital, though the Massachusetts courts have the final say in instances such as this, “it’s important to note that’s not necessarily the final word.”
“Immigration is the ultimate federal issue,” said Arthur. “When states interpose themselves in that process, they’re really getting into an area in which they have no expertise based upon anecdote and speculation.”
He noted that states and localities receive billions of dollars in federal funding every year, which can be made dependent on complying with federal immigration authorities.
“On the one hand, they’re demanding money from the federal government, and on the other hand, they’re telling the federal government that they won’t assist them in a key government duty,” he said. “Congress can always place any conditions that they want on funding, and this is a reasonable condition for them to put in place.”
Arthur said that he anticipates the Trump administration and incoming border czar Tom Homan will move quickly to push Congress to put such stipulations in place.
“The biggest issue with this is that it places ICE enforcement and removal officers in great danger because, rather than taking custody of a criminal in a secure location, a local jail or a state prison, they have to actually go out on the street. They have to find that person at their house, and that puts their lives at danger,” he explained. “It’s also important to note this is a community safety issue.”
“If we really want to keep our streets safe,” he went on, “the best way to do that is to take the criminals off the street. And really, that’s what should be happening, and I anticipate you will see a movement, particularly under a second Trump administration, to make that happen.”
Despite the actions by Barnstable County officials, Moreira da Cruz is currently in ICE custody, pending immigration and criminal proceedings.
