Immigrant calls police to report possible intruder, gets arrested and turned over to ICE instead

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday February 13, 2018 · 2:47 PM PST

2018/02/13 · 14:47

Screen_Shot_2018-02-13_at_2.42.33_PM.png — Wilson Rodriguez Macarreno

For the past few weeks, someone had been trying to break into Tukwila, Washington, resident Wilson Rodriguez Macarreno’s home and car. When he again saw someone trespassing on his property, he did what anyone else would do in the same situation: he called the police for help. But less than one hour later, he was the one in handcuffs, because Rodriguez Macarreno is an undocumented immigrant:

Police arriving on the scene apprehended a trespasser, according to Rodriguez's attorney, Luis Cortes.

Officers then put Rodriguez in handcuffs after he gave them his ID for what he thought was "report purposes," the lawyer said. Officers saw he had an outstanding warrant when they ran his information through the National Crime Information Center database.

According to Officer Victor Masters of the Tukwila Police Department, “it is standard procedure for Tukwila police to run victims, witnesses and suspects through NCIC to confirm their identity, Masters said. This procedure, in itself, is not unusual. The Seattle Police Department (SPD) and King County Sheriff’s Office do the same, according to spokesmen. What they don’t do is act on information in the database from immigration authorities”:

Tukwila police don’t usually act on ICE information they see in NCIC either, Masters said, nor do they ask about immigration status. But when the officers on the scene radioed in Rodriguez Macarreno’s name to dispatchers, who ran it through NCIC, what popped up looked different.

It was not just a note that ICE “was interested in speaking to the individual,” which is typical, according to Masters, but a warrant from the federal agency.

But according to Rodriguez Macarreno’s attorney, it was not an ICE warrant signed by a judge, but rather an administrative one. The former must be honored. The agency often uses the latter in their attempts to get local police departments to hold immigrants so they can come pick them up to arrest them. So while “police told The Seattle Times they did not have probable cause to arrest the trespasser,” Rodriguez Macarreno is now the one sitting in a detention facility.

According to the Seattle Times, “Masters said Tukwila police are now talking with ICE to determine what kind of warrant, exactly, ICE had issued in the Rodriguez Macarreno case and whether it is something the department is going to be seeing more of in the future”:

He said the department, after this incident, determined that if an ICE warrant appears in future NCIC checks, officers should notify their supervisor, who will take a closer look.

“If it’s administrative in nature, we’re not going to honor it,” Masters said.

Meanwhile, Cortes is trying to figure out a legal strategy for Rodriguez Macarreno. The lawyer said the Honduran immigrant may apply for asylum as well as pursue his freedom on the grounds that his arrest by Tukwila police was improper.

But even beyond the sheer insanity, senselessness, and carelessness of this arrest is the fact that in the face of Donald Trump’s unleashed mass deportation agents, numerous police chiefs from around the nation have said that immigrant communities have stopped reporting when they’ve been the victims of crime out of fear they or their families could fall onto ICE’s radar. Jorge Barón, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, says his “main concern isn't the blurred lines between the criminal and administrative warrants,” it’s the fear caused by arrests like Rodriguez Macarreno’s.

"It's not just going to hurt immigrant communities," he said. "It's going to hurt all of us."

Speaking at a City Council meeting Monday evening, Tukwila Assistant Police Chief Rick Mitchell said the department will work to reassure the community, "We are there for them."

"It is vital that every member of the community feels safe and comfortable when calling our police department for help," Mitchell said. "Our mission as a department has always been to welcome and educate those that come from others countries that are oftentimes wary or scared of law enforcement due to their interactions with police in their home country."

Local police departments know that when immigrant communities trust them enough to report crime, neighborhoods are safer for all. Instead, mass deportation policies are making us less safe. Rodriguez Macarreno, despite having two young children and no criminal record, could now be deported to Honduras, one of the most dangerous nations in the world. “Cortes is working to stop his client's deportation and is looking at reopening the case in which Rodriguez missed the court date, but the lawyer's future is also unclear—he is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipient.”

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