Ryan: It is an assault on our justice system
***ARticle first published by 'The Boston Herald' on April 29, 2019***
Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins said “it would be my honor” to face arrest by the feds in her opposition to ICE as she and Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan announced a lawsuit aimed at keeping immigrations officials out of Bay state courthouses.
Rollins and Ryan said they worked with public defenders, prosecutors, and various community groups over the past year to file the suit, which alleges that the increased ICE enforcement is scaring away immigrants and therefore making it harder to bring cases.
“That is an assault on our justice system,” Ryan said in a news conference Monday morning in which she slammed Immigrations & Customs Enforcement practices. “Not one person in our Commonwealth is safer because of that practice.”
“ICE’s policy is undermining the work of the justice system as a whole,” Ryan said. “Prosecutors are forced to abandon cases because many victims and witnesses are deterred from appearing in court. The policy also makes it more difficult to obtain defendants appearance in court.”
Gladys Vega, a community advocate from Chelsea, says her organization sees three to five cases a week in which people are scared to go to court.
“Our criminal justice system can only function properly when people feel safe coming to court,” Rollins said. “When victims, witnesses, and defendants fear that entering a courthouse could place them at risk of immigration consequences, it prevents us as prosecutors from securing justice for the people we serve.”
This comes less than a week after a Newton judge was indicted on charges of conspiring with a court officer to help an illegal immigrant escape out the basement door of Newton District Court last spring.
When asked if Rollins fears a similar arrest for obstruction based on her instructions to staff to alert her to ICE presence around courthouses, Rollins said, “I am in no fear of arrest, and, very candidly, if I am, it would be my honor.”
Ryan said last week’s case involving the judge “demonstrates what we need here today.”