Boston Police and federal officials gave wildly different figures on how many requests were filed with the department in 2024.
At the end of last year, Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox reported that his department received 15 civil immigration detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2024. But last week, an ICE spokesperson said that the agency actually lodged 198 detainer requests with the BPD.
What is the reason for this large discrepancy? The confusion stems from the methods by which ICE sends the detainer requests to the BPD, a spokesperson for the department said Monday. Specifically, the requests are sent entirely via fax machine, they said. This is despite the BPD asking for them to be sent via email as well two years ago.
“BPD has documented a total of 15 ICE detainer requests received via facsimile in 2024, but acknowledges that DHS may have different information. In January 2023, BPD asked that ICE stop sending detainer requests solely via fax to district stations, and also send them to a central email address. To date, ICE has not used the email address,” BPD spokesperson Mariellen Burns said in a statement Monday. “BPD will continue to work with local authorities to establish a better means of communication regarding civil detainer requests to comply with annual reporting requirements.”…