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A district attorney in Boston harshly criticized the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Wednesday, after one of its agents detained a suspect while he was on trial.
ICE agent Brian Sullivan detained Wilson Martell-Lebron last week as he was leaving court. But a Boston Municipal Court judge issued a ruling Monday against Sullivan, arguing that he had deprived Martell-Lebron of his rights to due process and a fair trial by taking him into custody.
“This action by ICE was troubling an extraordinarily reckless,” Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said. “As the judge noted, ICE's actions deprived Mr. Martell-Lebron of his right to a fair trial. It also deprived our office of our intent to hold the defendant accountable for his alleged crime.”
Summerville dismissed the charge against Martell-Lebron of making false statements on his driver’s license application -- namely that he wasn't Martell-Lebron. After that, Summerville filed the contempt charge against Sullivan, which could lead Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden review the case to determine if any charges should be filed.
“It's reprehensible,” Ryan Sullivan, one of Martell-Lebron's lawyers said. “Law enforcement agents have a job to see justice is done. Prosecutors have a job to see justice is done. There is no greater injustice in my mind than the government arresting someone, without identifying themselves, and preventing them from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to a jury trial.”
A spokesman for ICE did not return a call seeking comment.
Immigration officers were a growing presence at courthouses during Trump’s first term, prompting pushback from judges and other local officials. Trump has gone further in his second term by repealing a policy in place since 2011 to generally avoid schools, places of worship and hospitals.
Under current policy, immigration officials can make arrests “in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present” and as long as they are not prohibited by state or local law.
During the two-day hearing, Sullivan said that the lead prosecution witnessed confirmed that both the Massachusetts State police and prosecutors were aware of ICE plans to arrest Martell-Lebron.
Hayden said could not recall a case where ICE had detained a defendant during a trial.
“It should not have happened, and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he told reporters.
Sullivan described a tense scene, in which ICE agents pounced on Martell-Lebron without identifying themselves, put him into a pickup truck and sped away. The trial Thursday had just begun with opening statements and the first witnesses.
Sullivan said Martell-Lebron, who is from the Dominican Republic and living with family in Massachusetts, is now at the Plymouth detention facility for allegedly being an undocumented immigrant, he said.
“What we were challenging is that they arrested him in the middle of his trial and did not return him,” he said. “If he had been brought to court on Friday morning by ICE, we would not have moved to dismiss. We would not be asking for sanctions. We would have just finished the trial."
