DENVER ‒ Some suspects in violent assaults and sex crimes are escaping American justice because they’re being deported before they can stand trial, according to a number of prosecutors and legal experts across the country.
In one suburban Denver county, the district attorney has tallied at least six criminal cases he’s had to shelve or drop because Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained or deported suspects before he could prosecute them.
In another case in the city of Denver, a man suspected of attempted murder was released because ICE had deported the witnesses against him, forcing prosecutors to drop the charges. That suspect then tackled an ICE agent trying to detain him outside the jail.
And in Boston, a judge was forced to drop charges against a man accused of using a fake name on a driver’s license after ICE took him into custody mid-trial and refused to return him. Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden called ICE’s actions “troubling and extraordinarily reckless,” because the agents prevented him from prosecuting the detainee.
Across the country, prosecutors, defense attorneys and legal observers say they’ve seen an uptick in ICE agents choosing to deport criminal suspects, instead of keeping them in custody and producing them for local court proceedings.
“It’s not only undermining to the justice system but also impacting community safety,” said Adams County District Attorney Brian Mason, who serves a suburban area northeast of Denver.
These rapid deportations mean some innocent people are being denied the chance to clear their name in a U.S. courtroom. For crime victims, it means they never see the satisfaction of their assailant behind bars.
And it could be making all Americans less safe, legal experts say, when people with criminal backgrounds and no respect for the law cross back into the United States and commit more crimes.
“My fear that is that people will get deported, will essentially avoid criminal prosecution, will sneak back into the country … and live under the radar and never be held accountable and suffer no consequences whatsoever for their actions, and potentially perpetrate more crimes against other victims,” Mason said.
The Laken Riley Act effect
Legal experts say the increase appears to being driven in part by the new federal Laken Riley Act, which requires ICE to detain people living illegally in the United States once they have been accused or charged with certain crimes, including theft or shoplifting. Although the Riley Act, named for a Georgia nursing student killed in 2024 by an immigrant, doesn’t require deportations, at least some of the people detained under the law have subsequently been removed from the United States, experts told USA TODAY.
Sometimes that means those people are escaping prosecution for assaults, domestic violence or thefts. In other instances, prosecutors have dropped cases because ICE deported the witnesses. The people ICE targeted are accused of living illegally within the United States.
In another Massachusetts case, ICE detained a man facing state driving charges and refused to produce him for his trial, prompting the ACLU to ask a federal judge to intervene. The judge ordered ICE to produce the man, and he was found not guilty of the state charges. He was then returned to ICE custody, which had been the prior procedure.
President Donald Trump campaigned on tough new immigration policies, and ICE agents nationwide have been conducting high-profile detention operations, which the president said are primarily targeted at violent criminals and gang members. And he has chafed at judicial limits placed on deportations of people targeted because they were accused but never convicted.
“Murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and even the mentally insane will make their home in our country, wreaking havoc like we have never seen before,” Trump posted to social media in late April. “It is not possible to have trials for millions and millions of people. We know who the criminals are, and we must get them out of the U.S.A. and fast!”
ICE as a ‘getaway driver’
Prof. Michael Kagan, who runs the Immigration Clinic at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas law school, said the deportations-before-prosecution policy risks creating a two-tiered justice system: American citizens are imprisoned if convicted, but someone who commits the same crime while living illegally in the United States could be released with no punishment other than a free trip home.
“If you think that it’s worth incarcerating a citizen who has committed a crime, it becomes very hard to justify not incarcerating a non-citizen convicted of the same crime,” said Kagan, whose clinic provides legal aid to people facing deportation.
Kagan said some immigration experts have begun referring to ICE as a “getaway driver” because they believe the new system is ripe for abuse by offenders: “The U.S. citizen has to face trial and serious prison time while the non-citizen could just ask ICE to give him a ride to Mexico and get off free.”
Nicholas Reppucci, the chief public defender in Charlottesville, Virginia, said he’s already seeing less willingness by immigrants to testify as witnesses over the aggressive new approach.
“It is having a very significant negative impact, not just for criminal defendants but for complainants or people who have been victimized by crimes,” he said. “Inherently, in my option, people are less likely to come to court to have wrongs righted.”
Mason, the Colorado district attorney, said he previously worked with ICE agents to secure what are known as U visas, which grant crime victims the right to remain in the United States so they can testify in local criminal cases. Now, the collaboration is gone, he said.
“If a victim of crime is afraid to come to the Adams County courthouse because she’s afraid she’ll get detained in the parking lot by ICE, then I can’t prosecute that case,” he said. “It’s not only undermining to the justice system but also impacting community safety.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ICE adopts new tactic: Deport before court
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