The Laken Riley Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon, was the first legislative victory of his second term in office. The bipartisan bill widens the crimes for which an undocumented immigrant could be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and held without bail.
That now includes lesser offenses such as burglary, theft, larceny and shoplifting, along with more serious crimes like assault of a law enforcement officer and serious bodily injury. And it’s already reverberating in Minnesota.
Mike Berger, the head of the Hennepin County Public Defender’s Office, said his office learned one of their clients was detained by ICE while walking into the Government Center ahead of a court appearance recently. Berger said that while it’s only a single example, so far, it goes against the standard protocol for how ICE has operated in Minnesota in his 17 years as a public defender.
In the past, Berger said, ICE would put holds on defendants who were already in custody for serious offenses. “That always happens,” he said. “What the change is now is any [detention] that happens at the courthouse or government center is inherently going to be lower level offenses because these are folks that are out of custody.”
Berger said his office believes ICE agents will be tracking publicly available court calendars to try and detain defendants who are arriving for a criminal appearance.
A spokesperson for Hennepin County could not confirm that the ICE detainment happened on government property. Bill Ward, the head of the Minnesota Board of Public Defense, said his office is monitoring the situation but so far hasn’t seen anything out of the ordinary with ICE detainments.
Messages for comment left with ICE were not returned but an official memo released by the department earlier this month provided interim guidance for how the office would approach arrests in or near courthouses by trying to “reduce safety risks to the public, targeted alien(s), and ICE officers and agents.”
The memo notes that courthouses have security protocols already in place and using the courthouse gives ICE the ability to detain undocumented people at a specific time and location.
