TRURO — With federal immigration enforcement raids on the rise across Massachusetts, officials in Truro are weighing how staff should respond if one should take place at a town building such as the school or library.

While such scenarios are for now hypothetical, worries about how to protect staff prompted the select board’s then-vice chair, Bob Weinstein, to request a discussion of the town’s responsibilities at the board’s May 14 meeting.

“He was concerned — and I think all of us are concerned — about immigration raids going on throughout the state and elsewhere,” said chair Sue Areson on May 14. The board was still “trying to determine what we as town officials and people in the community can do,” she said.

(Weinstein had requested the item be added to the agenda before the town election on May 13, at which he was defeated by former select board member John Dundas. As a result, Dundas was a board member on May 14 while Weinstein was not.)

The discussion came after a May 8 immigration raid in Worcester during which a group of protestors, including a city council member and a school board candidate, attempted to block ICE agents from arresting a woman after the federal agents refused to produce a warrant for her detention.

The agents ultimately detained the woman, Rosane Ferreira De Oliveira, after which the Worcester police arrested her teenage daughter and the school board candidate, Ashley Spring, for disorderly conduct and other charges.

On May 14, the day of Truro’s meeting, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley issued a warning to public officials in the state against interference with immigration enforcement, stating that “I will not stand idly by if any public official, public safety officer, organization, or private citizen acts in a manner that criminally obstructs or impedes ICE operations.”

 

Police Dept. Rules

Truro Police Chief Jamie Calise told the board that under state law, civil immigration detainers — ICE requests that local authorities hold someone for up to 48 hours past their scheduled release from custody — are not enforceable.

Citing the 2017 Mass. Supreme Judicial Court decision Lunn v. Commonwealth, Calise said that honoring such detainers would constitute a false arrest. “That’s the law of the land, and that’s the direction officers have received,” Calise said.

“We’re in the executive branch, we follow the law, and the law is that civil detainers are unenforceable,” said Calise. “Officers cannot go outside the scope of their authority — doing so would open them to personal and town liability.”

Calise said that criminal detainers, which are more like traditional court-issued warrants, are treated differently and are enforceable like any other criminal warrant.

Although local police are not obliged to assist ICE’s civil enforcement actions, “at the same time, you can’t interfere,” Calise said. “That would be considered obstruction.”

Calise also told the board that Truro police do not ask about immigration status during stops or arrests, and that a five-year review of department records turned up no ICE detainers or arrest warrants in town.

“This is not an issue that we’ve seen in Truro,” he said. “But with that said, we prepare for what we might have to do rather than what we do.”

 

Library Guidance

The question of staff obligations came to the fore at Truro’s public library in recent weeks, where staff, with the approval of the library trustees, offered guidance from the American Library Association (ALA) on how to handle law enforcement encounters, including those involving immigration authorities.

“When they started to see raids in New Bedford and on Cape Cod, people asked what the library could do to inform the community about what their rights are,” Areson said.

Though there have been no reported immigration raids in libraries so far, the ALA guidance encourages librarians to understand the distinction between judicial warrants and civil detainers and to know when they need to give access to public and nonpublic parts of the building.

The advice has been updated several times in recent months in response to new enforcement patterns — although not yet in response to the Worcester raid, during which federal agents allegedly refused to produce any kind of warrant.

The select board asked KP Law attorney Janelle Austin to review the ALA guidance. “This is a matter that communities across the Commonwealth are currently considering,” Austin told the board.

The ALA is a nongovernmental body, and its guidance is not legally binding, Austin said, adding that “the Commonwealth has offered it as a resource, but it is not Commonwealth guidance.”

Even so, many towns are using the recommendations as a baseline for internal procedures and staff training, Austin said. If federal agents were to show up at a municipal building, the response of town officials would depend on which documents the agents present, she said.

Dundas worried about staff relying too heavily on such unofficial guidance. “I do not want any misunderstanding that could lead to obstruction, because that’s a problem for our employees,” he said. “I wouldn’t want them to be in a situation like that.”

Austin and Areson agreed. “We don’t want to be in a position — given the federal law requirements and the increased Dept. of Justice enforcement — where any town official or employee is obstructing or hindering an operation,” Austin said. “There is certainly always the option to consult with the town manager’s office or legal counsel in the event that there are specific questions regarding documentation that has been presented.”

If the idea is for staff to consult KP Law during an immigration raid — and try to avoid obstruction — that still raises the question of what staff should do while waiting for an answer. Library Director Chris Kaufmann told the Independent that her staff would not provide information to law enforcement without first contacting acting Town Manager Kelly Clark and KP Law.

In response to a question from Areson, Clark said the town does not have a written policy for staff to follow.

“I think setting up some procedures could be the most effective way to go,” said Clark. The select board writes policies, but since immigration enforcement is changing rapidly, “we don’t want to have to wait for a policy to follow a best practice,” she said.

Clark asked if KP Law could provide written guidance developed in other Massachusetts towns.

“We hope we don’t have to act on any of this,” Areson concluded.