Press Release: Council Unanimously Passes Councilmember Allen’s Emergency Legislation Limiting the District’s Cooperation with ICE

News Release — Ward 6 DC Council member Charles Allen

October 8, 2019

Contact: Erik Salmi

Today, the DC Council unanimously voted to pass emergency legislation introduced by Councilmember Charles Allen (Ward 6) that limits cooperation between the District of Columbia and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“The District of Columbia should not be complicit with the Trump Administration’s attempt to cruelly terrorize our immigrant neighbors.  And we know cruelty is the point with these attacks. There is no compelling public safety justification for cooperating. If we say we are a Sanctuary City, we must take the steps to back those words up,” said Councilmember Allen, who Chairs the Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety. “In fact, to promote public safety, we must foster trust, not fear, between law enforcement and our communities.”

The emergency legislation clarifies and strengthens the District’s existing laws and policies limiting collaboration with ICE, primarily by the Department of Corrections. It would prohibit the District from doing the following without a judicial warrant or order:

1. Holding an individual in custody after that individual would otherwise have been legally released;
2. Notifying ICE of individuals’ release dates, times, locations, addresses, or criminal case information;
3. Providing space or equipment to ICE for a search or inquiry about an individual in the District’s custody;
4. Permitting ICE to interview an individual in the District’s custody without an opportunity to have counsel present; and
5. Granting ICE access to any District detention facility, including the Department of Corrections, the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, and St. Elizabeths Hospital, to release an individual into federal custody.

The emergency bill also prohibits the District from inquiring into the immigration status of a person in its custody. Importantly, the Council could not apply the protections of (2) and (5) above to federal detainees,^[1] according to an intergovernmental agreement between the Department of Corrections and the U.S. Marshals.

Current law, passed in 2012, limits the District’s compliance with civil detainer requests from ICE. The emergency legislation builds on that foundation and other supports by the District government like legal funding to more fully protect District residents. Detainer requests are not mandatory, and many jurisdictions across the country have chosen to limit or prohibit compliance with these requests. A number of federal courts have upheld these “sanctuary policies.”

Today’s introductions include an emergency bill and temporary bill that would go into effect immediately after being signed by the Mayor. Councilmember Allen has also introduced permanent legislation and will hold a public hearing to consider how to expand the protections in the emergency bill.