Suffolk County will appeal a decision made last week by a federal district court judge holding the county liable for damages to approximately 650 people detained by the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office at the request of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between July 18, 2014 and Nov. 15, 2018.
County Executive Ed Romaine said the county faces liability for as much as $60 million in damages for honoring ICE detention requests — which Romaine called “nothing short of ridiculous.”
We will fight this all the way, Romaine said at a press conference in Hauppauge yesterday.
The federal class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of a class of persons detained by the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office from July 18, 2014 and Nov. 15, 2018, alleging that the sheriff’s office held them beyond its legal authority to do so, on detainer requests by ICE. The detention violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the fourth and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution and under Article I of the New York State Constitution, according to the plaintiffs’ complaint.
U.S. District Court Judge William Kuntz II in the Eastern District of New York on Jan. 2 granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment as to the county’s liability.
In 2016, former Suffolk County Sheriff Vincent DiMarco directed that the Suffolk County jail would honor ICE detainers accompanied by a Department of Homeland Security warrant of arrest/removal/deportation and that prisoners subject to the ICE detainers would be “held for up to 48 hours after the time the prisoner would otherwise be released.”
A 2018 New York State appellate court decision determined that the Suffolk Sheriff lacked the authority to detain the prisoners pursuant to ICE detainers and administrative warrants. DeMarco’s successor, Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr. directed that the practice be immediately discontinued.
MORE COVERAGE: State appellate court halts Suffolk County Sheriff’s ICE detainer policy
ICE was dismissed from the federal class action lawsuit that ensued and last week the federal court ruled in that suit that the county was liable for honoring the ICE detainer requests.
Toulon said at yesterday’s press conference that penalizing the county for following the law as it was interpreted at the time “is unjustifiable.”
“When New York State determined that we could no longer honor ICE detainers … we immediately complied, ceasing the practice following the court’s decisions,” Toulon said.
“I vow to fight a court decision that may cost county taxpayers $60 million through a lawsuit brought by people in this country illegally and charged with crimes in Suffolk County,” Romaine said in an Instagram post yesterday. “We will not accept this decision. We will not put those who are here illegally and being charged with crimes before Suffolk County veterans, families and children,” the county executive wrote.
Last month, the City of New York settled a similar class action lawsuit, filed over a decade ago, by agreeing to pay $92.5 million to improperly detained immigrants. The plaintiffs in that case argued that the city unlawfully detained more than 20,000 people after their scheduled release dates between 1997 and 2012.
According to the New York Times, the city’s law department said in a statement that city officials had “operated with the assumption that compliance with ICE detainers was mandated under federal law.”
The statement continued, the Times wrote: “Court rulings eventually clarified that localities could not hold a detainee beyond their release date based solely on the contents of a federal detainer and that a court order is needed. New York City changed its policies in 2012 to conform with these court rulings.”
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