What you -- yes, you -- should know about interacting with ICE - Bump, WaPo
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I talked to David Leopold, the past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and a practicing attorney in Ohio.
“The overriding right is to remain silent,” Leopold said of Immigration and Customs Enforcement encounters when we spoke last week. “That should always be first and foremost in everybody’s mind. You don’t have to give a statement. You don’t have to talk about anything. You don’t have to make any admissions about your immigration status — and you shouldn’t.”
There are some questions worth asking, however. Particularly if being confronted by plainclothes officers, you can ask for names and badge numbers of the officers. You can also ask if you are free to leave. “Just because the person identifies themselves as an ICE agent doesn’t mean you’re under arrest,” he said. “ICE has to have what’s called reasonable suspicion or probable cause or a warrant to arrest you. And, if they don’t, if they just approached you in the street, I think the best way to protect your rights is to politely walk away because you are free to leave unless they explain why they’re going to hold you.”
Sometimes, ICE will appear at people’s homes with administrative warrants, he added — documents that are signed by immigration officers, not judges. (You can see examples here.) Compliance with such warrants isn’t required, but officers often use them to intimidate people into letting the officers into their homes. If you don’t consent to a search, you should articulate that explicitly.
Leopold noted that immigrants and those in the U.S. on visas have a right to legal counsel. Representation has been shown to make a huge difference in the outcome of immigration cases. “Everybody who thinks they could be detained by ICE or who’s worried about it,” he said, “should prepare a detention plan in advance,” including identifying counsel. If immigration officials present documents to be signed, you should only do so after consulting with an attorney.
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