A motion this past Tuesday by City Councilor Vesna Nuon requested the City Manager have Lowell Police Department provide their official policy for interacting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and how they plan to communicate that policy to the Lowell community. It took less than three days for Police Superintendent Greg Hudon to outline that policy.
The agenda for the next council meeting, scheduled for February 11, contains the Chief’s response to the motion, along with a detailed explanation of the department’s Immigration Policy.
Any question about whether LPD officers will in any way defy ICE requests or not cooperate was clarified in Hudon’s letter addressed to Manager Golden.
“The Lowell Police Department cooperates and assists with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) when formally requested, as we do with all our law enforcement partners such as local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies (FBI, DEA, etc.),” Hudon writes. “Our officers are also bound by law to make arrests when a judicially issued federal arrest warrant exists for an individual and where a potential threat to public safety or national security is perceived.”
The Superintendent does state “a person’s right to request assistance, file a police report, participate in police-community activities, or otherwise benefit from general police services is not contingent upon the individual providing proof of citizenship or documented immigration status.”
He also goes on to explain that officers do not routinely question any person about his or her specific citizenship or immigration status when responding to that person’s request for assistance, along with reinforcing that the Lowell Police Department recognizes and values the diversity of the community they serve.
The LPD Immigration Policy has been in place since April 8, 2015.
Click here to view the Immigration Policy in its entirety.
4 responses to “Police Chief Outlines Policy Regarding ICE”
The should support ice all the way clean up our city as we voted for this. Us citizens deserve to be safe. Illegals need to be picked up. We support ice police .
Not surprising that Las Vegas politicians including even the police leadership are determined to follow their own personal directions rather than that of the citizens who they are elected to serve. So much for the idea that they are “public servants”.
They are all self serving
The LPD policy is very thorough and explicit. It clearly outlines the LPD’s role in cooperating with ICE in the same way it does with other law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and DEA. Local police do not determine immigration status when fulfilling their role assisting and/or protecting citizens since immigration is a federal issue. It is not any local police department’s role to detain people solely based on immigration status regardless of anyone’s opinion that they should. Those who have not committed a felony crime or do not post another threat to the community get the same protections from local police as legal citizens. Seems to me that what people voted for was to remove violent individuals who have committed felony crimes and are here illegally, not to round up law abiding people and families whose only “crime” is to be here without legal status.