i'm the associate vice president of policy at the david rothenberg center for public policy at the fortune society and welcome to both sides of the bars a discussion driven show that examines the criminal justice system from various perspectives including those most impacted by the criminal justice system we discussed critical questions about how the current system works its intersections with social justice and highlight the efforts that are being made to improve the lives of everyone that is affected by it we ask you the viewers to spread the word about both sides of the bars and share your comments with us on twitter at the fortune s o c and at legal aid n y c today's show is titled immigration and criminal law a nexus of perpetual punishment my guest today is casey del porto an attorney from the legal aid society specializing in immigration and criminal law since november two thousand and sixteen she has worked as a criminal immigration specialist in the bronx legal aid office thank you for joining us casey almost from the very beginning of his campaign true in leading right into his term the current president has misused anti immigrant rhetoric in action the current administration has touted the building of a wall attempted to implement travel bans and separated migrant children from their parents however the current immigration detention in deportation machine was not built by the current administration let's not forget that it was the previous administration that has deported more people than all of the previous administrations combined yet currently there are challenges that are reflective of a different focus for the current administration so casey what are some of those trends that you see so we see a spike in and for cement in the interior so we think of immigration there's immigration enforcement at the border which is border patrol and then immigration enforcement in the interior like within the walls of the united states so to speak and that's usually left to ice and i stands for immigration and customs enforcement enforcement as the administration sort of i found their footing in terms of immigration enforcement they started to really hone their focus and so rather than  just executing a huge dragnet and and you know raiding you know farms or restaurants they started to really hone in on the types of of targets the types of system which categorized people into three different priority categories there is the highest priority and those are people with serious felony convictions there is a level two priority which were people with the you know what they deem serious m divert all of their resources to targeting the people in the top priority primarily so the people who you know most people would it would expect you to be focusing on people who were violent who had violent felony convictions and those criminal convictions if i can just ask a clarifying question those criminal convictions could have been one year prior to them being picked the bios or it could have been thirty years prior to them being picked up and once a person was in the system what level of evidence could they present to show that a person has somehow changed their life from the time that they were convicted of a crime to the time that immigration came and picked them up so that actually raises a really good point about good i've done like i had this serious violent felony like say i was in baldwin like or a robbery or something in the eighty's or ninety's but since then i have kids i have grandkids like i'm working you know i've established a whole life here i'm a business owner a church going and and so you could submit these applications to ice agents or ice prosecutors and they have the discretion or they were really empowered with this discretion to say like ok on a case by case basis if there are extremely mitigating circumstances we're not going to cause undue hardship on these people's lives and their families and their communities and everyone who relies on them you know americans rely on this person  discretion for people with with even who have been following the highest targeted in her eighty's so when trying came into office immediately he rescinded that whole system and he heavily curtailed the exercise of prosecutorial discretion it kind of got overshadowed it said everyone's a priority it doesn't matter what your circumstances are if you're here and you don't have legal cover to be here it meaning if you don't have any legal status we we will go after you know in a safe and so so that's really that's that's how it is right now and you know every once in a while we'll hear some tweets from the president or from jeff sessions or kiersten milsom who's now the head of the department of homeland security who says you know oh but even though we could deport anybody legally we really focus on the criminal  alien statistically that doesn't actually bear out they don't focus on people exclusively with criminal convictions or even serious criminal convictions there's been a huge spike in arrests and deportation  who are have no criminal record whatsoever and those folks could be i would assume those are folks who are largely undocumented and so that's the reason that they're justifying to go after them is that someone is here undocumented whether they have involvement with the criminal justice system or not the mere fact that you are undocumented makes you eligible to be arrested and detained and potentially deported by ice right i don't so undocumented can mean a lot of things it could mean that you the border from mexico and it could mean that you came here on a visitor visa from eastern europe or something decades ago and you overstate your visa and it could mean that you once had dhaka and now you don't  for all those two hundred thousand people and now means that you once had t p s which is dance for temporary protective status it was another form of humanitarian relief for people who came from countries that were unfit to be deported but who are justice system but also had serious criminal conviction in where they were documented or not and not a current administration as you mentioned has a wide dragnet that they say everyone's a priority but the reality is that people who are here undocumented the various you know keeping in mind the various examples that you gave that that seems to be their priority and if so what are what is what is based on your experience with working with folks like this what is the feel in those communities of having this system feeling like it is constantly scanning and looking for speedball who are here undocumented yeah well i hesitate to say that anyone's really a priority under the current enforcement scheme and they certainly haven't disclosed any priority system or any methodology to who they choose to target and why  you know the immigration advocate organizations within new york city legal aid society the immigrant defense project vance offenders brooklyn offenders we all meet every month and we sort of huddle and talk about our own anecdotal experiences about who's being targeted who's getting arrested which of our clients have been picked up and we've all just you know we have spread sheets of information and then trying to discern some kind of pattern some kind of intelligible logic to who they're targeting and we really can't figure it out so you know despite with what their their line that you know the public line is about you know that they're only targeting criminal what they call criminal aliens that's actually not the our our statistics don't reflect that at all it does reflect that they are targeting an undocumented individuals with no record people who have never been arrested before or people who are extremely vulnerable you know like we've seen targeting of of our victims of human trafficking for example victims of domestic violence so it seems that no class of undocumented people is exempt from and what does that do i mean you know it feels random and that's terrifying have means that you're living under a culture of panic and paranoia  and and terror you know it's it's bad and it's been really hard on the immigrant community as well as all new yorkers i mean i can speak for the bronx community and you know the larger new york city community and there's just been a lot of fear yeah and so tell me a little bit about you know now moving from national to more local tell me a little bit about legally in some other organizations effort to get ice to not be allowed into courthouses and why is that important some people here that any say well you know ice has discretion to go wherever they want and if they are allowed to go into the courthouses and why not go into the courthouse is right that the assumption is that there are going after folks who have or who have who are facing criminal charges but the reality is quite different right can you explain to the viewers so just to give you some context you know historically ice and your previous administrations has has sort of self imposed restricted areas that they call sensitive locations and these are sort of off limits for ice and force men and so it includes churches hospitals schools and so under previous administrations ice has said we were not going to go to those locations and courthouses were sort of on that list as well that was sort of a gray area they reserved the right to go to courthouses but largely the abstain from going to courthouses and that is because courthouses are an institution of justice and they really are like the pillar of our democracy and they have all of these sorts of really highly esteemed values about you know the pursuit of justice and that everyone should go and feel safe it's a really should be a sacrosanct place  and the same way that kind of churches or hospitals or schools should be as well so under the trump administration they have they have not followed the sense of location  policy and so you have seen an increased enforcement in in churches and schools and hospitals and to a great extent in court houses so there's been a huge surge internally we've been collecting our own so you know all those one hundred percent increase under the current administration in terms of arrests made in the courthouse right so one thousand two hundred percent increase in arresting courthouses right and so it used to be like sort of a safe space and now it's just become like a feeding ground for ice and forstmann ice agents are in our hallways patrolling trolling stocking our clients every week they come to the bronx hall of justice they come to every other courthouse in the city and and you know they argue that it is legal we argue that it's not right now we are proposing  bill that's currently pending in the new york state legislature to ban ice from court and and that would cause a fire create into an actual statute or actual law what we believe is a longstanding legal precedent for prohibiting civil arrests in courthouse facilities and for that reason that i mentioned earlier because courthouses are historically really should be upheld as like the the highest ideal of our government and should be protected and based on your internal research in just conversations you had with the other defender organizations the type of folks that are being apprehended are those folks in the criminal court house and in the first place so you know there's also a lot of reasons that you could be in the courthouse you could be a victim you could be a witness you could be a criminal defendant  almost all of the people that have been targeted in in new york city courthouses who were defendants were charged with very low level offenses only missed a minor offenses almost  oftentimes those cases end up getting dismissed and that's the natural course of a criminal case in new york city you know someone makes a complaint and the facts don't bear it out there's no evidence of prosecution can't make out their case and the case goes away yeah you know and that's part of our justice system like you're presumed innocent until you're proven guilty and if they can prove you're guilty of that and then you're innocent under the eyes of the law and unfortunately that's that doesn't seem to matter to us so we've had a lot of clients who go in for their court dates and on that even after the case gets dismissed on the record i still ambushes the men and arrests and you also see a lot of clients i mentioned earlier trafficking and we've sort of come to understand that these you know prostitution based offenses are are really kind of blaming the victim and so we're trying to divert that and divert these individuals out of the criminal justice system and into these programs that will help to seize them more as you know victims caught in this exploitation system and ironically those are those individuals also if they are undocumented but congress has created special pathways to status for those vulnerable populations for victims of trafficking for victims of domestic violence for victims of serious crimes and these are all people that are coming to court kind legislator so are there similar bills in other states that have passed and if so have they worked to keep ice out of courthouses there have been several states where the states have taken legal action either through  of states that have signaled to i really or publicly we don't want you stocking our clients and exploiting our courthouses as your you know trap for undocumented people and it also creates a chaotic environment and so taking that into consideration met several states have taken measures to ban ice  so we're just you know hoping that new york will fall in line and you know new york has always been a leader for the immigrant community we are a city and state build of immigrants and you know question you know people hear those term sanctuary cities and they think in very traditional sense of what the word sanctuary means and but here we're hearing that not only in new york city but also in major metropolitan cities across the country that sanctuary doesn't actually mean what i would assume most folks thinks that it means which is that someone can be living in this city undocumented maybe even has had a order or removal against them and have no fear of being apprehended by what is the reality well i mean to some extent we are sanctuary city and that's something that immigrant advocates like the legal aid society like make the road like the immigrants of france project have feel take great pride and because we have we have passed a number of laws and executive orders over the past decade especially under the obama administration to protect new yorkers and so now we have certain measures in place so that you know  for example no city employees and no state employees are allowed to cooperate with i to and i said for some it operations which means that like you know if you go to a hospital let's say it's a city hospital let's say you go to bellevue bellevue is not allowed to call ice on you the same goes for any other city employee or city employee so that's been a really excellent development and  and it's really changed the lives of many immigrants in this city unfortunately it can't protect you completely if you're if you're a deportable person living in new york city the reality is that you know if you're in public ice can find you and and so you know we've we've done as much as we can sort of within the confines of the law and you know we still have a long way to go you know including hopefully the passage of this bill that's currently pending in the state legislature which would at least close off of that channel for  courthouses but but you know it's also reflects the spirit i think of the city you know there's a lot of anti immigrant hostility that has sprung up or sort of been exercised under the trump  ministration and and we want to send a message to our immigrant community that we're here with you and we stand by you and we recognize the assault on your liberties and your sense of safety that you're experiencing and we're doing everything that we can to make that easier in the last few minutes that we have i would love to talk a little bit about a case know was working in was attempting to do his job and deliver a pizza to army base in fort greene brooklyn and was ultimately by the end of the night ended up in ice custody  how does that happen in what is happening with his case and how is this all too often not uncommon to actually happen so pablo is a client is a weekly it's society  what's happening is case currently as we were able to get a story of a move on which means the literally fifteen twenty minutes before he was set to be put on a plane back to mexico we ended up persuading a federal judge  to block his deportation at least for until july twentieth so that we can explore avenues for relief and we can talk about those avenues in a second but but what it really reflects i think is is the point that i was saying earlier which is that there's just spend so much anti immigrant hostility and it's a very ugly vicious climate in terms of just like the culture in the public and i think the trumpet ministration has really kind of endorsed that kind of hatred and vitriol and you know so you have people you know new yorkers turning on new yorkers and that's what happened here so i think you know this was he came to the army base to deliver a pizza it's my understanding that the person the guard who checked him in was wasn't a law enforcement officer at all was actually just a civilian who took it upon himself to report him to i and and we do you know i have i have to say i have anecdotally heard of a lot like there's a lot of paranoia that like you know my our clients are afraid that you know old grudges are going to report them heard that you know their ex girlfriends or ex boyfriends are going to call ice on the and or you know landlords that they don't get along with are going to extort money from that or or or else turn them over to i and so that's been sort of an unfortunate unfortunate turn in the culture it's just been that you know i think the immigrant community feels afraid that even apart from ice officers who are are supposed to be looking for them that they may be targeted by anyone and so in the last thirty seconds that we have what is something that our viewers can do to help support problems case so for pablo i would i was kind of petition so right now we're collecting signatures to present to the ice field officer director for new york city to try to persuade him to exercise some prosecut discretion as i said earlier that's that program has almost completely been curtailed under trump but we think that this is an exceptionally sympathetic case his name is thomas home on and he does have the authority to exercise pr so you can go to our twitter handle or the make the road twitter handle and we have a pittance the second thing would be to find your local assemblyman find your local senator call them and see and tell them that you support any program that insight and your expertise and thank you to the viewers for tuning in if you are interested in finding out more about the fortune society please check us out on the web at fortune society awards or on facebook