Judge orders New York City to hand over shelter residents’ names and birth dates to ICE

A federal judge has ordered New York City officials to hand over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the names and dates of birth of people staying in a homeless shelter in the Bronx, despite the city’s repeated efforts to prevent it. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued the order in a 12-page resolution, stating that the city “has not shown that providing this list entails an excessive burden.”

According to the order, ICE said the list would assist an investigation to determine whether any shelter residents were subject to deportation. Federal officials narrowed their request to residents with a serious criminal record and agreed to appoint a judicial expert to collect and provide only those names. Kaplan wrote that, given the agency’s agreement to use a judicial expert and its assessment that the records are relevant to its investigation, “the subpoena deals with a substantial and relevant matter for the application of federal immigration laws.” Limiting the request to a narrower group reflects care for vulnerable residents, a concern taken up in Psalm 82:3.

The dispute began in August of last year, when ICE filed an administrative summons seeking the full names and dates of birth of all residents of two municipal shelters. The city refused, calling the request a search for inappropriate information “lacking any legitimate investigative purpose.” Federal authorities reviewed the petition at different times, but the city continued to reject it, claiming that the agency was asking for information it described as inadvertent and that producing it would involve costs and considerable staff time.

New York City argued that the petition was “more policy than investigative” and that it sought to evade and undermine the city’s “sanctuary city” laws. Kaplan did not agree, as the Daily News reported. “This speculation is groundless in the file,” the judge wrote. “While the city and the federal government do not agree on immigration policy, there is nothing in the file that suggests, sufficiently, that the ICE attempts to identify migrants with a serious criminal record for a reason other than enforcing immigration laws.”

The city’s sanctuary laws were approved under the administration of former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014 and limit communication and cooperation between federal agencies and local agencies, including law enforcement. Kaplan gave the parties a two-week deadline to make a plan for the delivery of names.

Earlier, in October, a federal judge in Brooklyn dismissed a lawsuit filed by the government of President Donald Trump. That lawsuit, filed in July of last year, sought a court order to eliminate local laws that prohibit the use of municipal resources in immigration enforcement tasks. It also sought to prevent city agencies, including the Correctional Department and the New York Police Department (NYPD), from complying with civil detention orders issued by ICE and other federal agencies.

Source: Read the original report (translated from Spanish)