Boston – A judge in Boston is holding a USA Contempt agent after stopping a suspect while the man was in trial.
ICE agent Brian Sullivan arrested Wilson Martell-Lebron last week when he left the court. But a judge of the Municipal Court of Boston issued a ruling on Monday against Sullivan, arguing that he had deprived Martell-Lebron of his rights to due process and a trial just by stopping him.
“It is about violating the right of a defendant to present at the trial and face the witnesses against him,” Judge Mark Summerville said from the bank. “It couldn’t be more serious.”
Summerville dismissed the position against Martell-Lebron to make false statements about his driver’s license application, namely that it was not Martell-Lebron. After that, Summerville filed the position of contempt against Sullivan, which could lead the District of the Suffolk County District, Kevin Hayden, review the case to determine if any position must be submitted.
“It’s representable,” said Ryan Sullivan, one of Martell-Lebron’s lawyers. “The law agents have a job to see that justice is done. Prosecutors have a job to see that justice is done. There is no greater injustice in my mind than the government that arrests someone, without identifying themselves and preventing them from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to a jury trial.”
An ICE spokesman did not answer a call for comments.
Ice movement is the last effort to Target Boston about its immigration management.
President Donald Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan and Republicans in Congress, accused the city of not cooperating so that people accuse of violent crimes deported. Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat for re -election this year, said she wants Boston to be a cozy place for immigrants and that city policies limit cooperation with the application of immigration.
Sullivan described a tense scene, in which the ice agents pounced in Martell-Lebron without identifying themselves, put it in a truck and quickly moved away. On Thursday of the trial he had just started with opening statements and the first witnesses.
Sullivan said that Martell-Lebron, who is from the Dominican Republic and lives with his family in Massachusetts, is now in the Plymouth detention center for allegedly being an undocumented immigrant, he said.
“What we were challenging is that they arrested him in the midst of his trial and did not return it,” he said. “If I had been taken to the Court on Friday morning by ICE, we would not have moved to dismiss. We would not be asking for sanctions. We would end up finishing the trial.”
Immigration officers were a growing presence in the courts during Trump’s first mandate, which caused some rejection of judges and other local officials. Trump has gone further in his second term repealing a policy since 2011 to generally avoid schools, places of worship and hospitals.
According to current policy, immigration officials can make arrests “in or near the courts when they have credible information that leads them to believe that objective foreigners are or will be present” and whenever they are not prohibited by state or local law.
During the two-day hearing, Sullivan said that the main prosecution witnessed confirmed that both the Massachusetts state police and the prosecutors were aware of ICE’s plans to arrest Martell-Lebron.
In a statement, the State Police said they acted properly after learning about the ice plans. “As in any situation in which a member realizes the federal immigration application, the soldiers responded properly by attending or obstructing federal action,” the statement said.
James Borghesani, spokesman for the Suffolk County District Prosecutor, Kevin Hayden, said: “We were dismayed and surprised when our prosecution of Wilson Martell-Lebron was interrupted by the ice that stopped him in the middle of his trial.”
“Any statement that we were aware of an attempt to prevent Mr. Martell-Lebron from exercising his right to trial is false.” He said in a statement. “It was our intention to prove Mr. Martell-Lebron and hold it responsible for the alleged crimes in the complaint. Federal authorities should not have stopped it and interfere with our efforts to hold it responsible.”
The contempt case has been sent to the Suffolk district prosecutor’s office and a spokesman said they were investigating it.
During Trump’s first mandate, the judicial system in the state fought with how to respond to ice.
Two district prosecutors in Massachusetts sued the federal government in 2019 seeking to avoid arrests in court, but left the case when former President Joe Biden assumed the position.
Newton’s district judge, Shelley Joseph, also faced charges, who were then retired, of helping a man who lived in the United States illegally evades an immigration application agent. The charges were withdrawn after she agreed to refer to a state agency that investigates the accusations of misconduct by the bank members.
