“Even if you’re a recidivist and jumped a turnstile for the fourth or tenth time, and we arrest you for the misdemeanor crime, that’s a misdemeanor,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Legal Affairs Larry Byrne told reporters at a press conference on Friday. “Nobody is getting deported for a minor offense.”
Several legal and immigrant advocates have pointed out that Byrne’s statement was false.
“The NYPD is conflating two separate issues,” Andrea Sáenz, supervising immigration attorney for the Brooklyn Defenders, told the Voice in a statement.
Sáenz added that while the NYPD will not hold someone so they can turn them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement — referred to as a “detainer” — for a charge of jumping a subway turnstile, a theft of services conviction is considered a “crime involving moral turpitude” under the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which means ICE considers it a removable offense.
“With or without a detainer, ICE can arrest people at home, work, and court, detain them or release them, and give them a court date for deportation proceedings in which their charges are based on offenses like fare-evasion and counterfeit handbags,” Sáenz says. “This absolutely happens to New Yorkers, even if the NYPD is not aware of it. This is a perfect example of how ICE detainers are only one link in a chain that ties our clients to the detention and deportation system.”
According to a FOIA obtained by Queens Neighborhoods United, a community organization based in Jackson Heights and Corona, Queens, more than 1,100 immigrants were arrested in just Queens and Nassau counties between September 1st, 2015 and April 12th, 2016, before President Trump substantially lowered the bar for what constitutes a priority for immigration enforcement.
Many of these arrests, according to interviews with immigration defense lawyers, stem from low-level violations or a situation where ICE was alerted to an immigrant’s location based on a low-level arrest, and then arrested the individual based on a much, much older conviction.