Two Detroit police officers have been suspended for working with federal immigration agents, which led to the detainment of two illegal aliens.
Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison told the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners last week that the suspensions stemmed from Dec. 16 and Feb. 9 interactions with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Border Patrol that violated the department’s policies, the Detroit Free Press reported. He also asked the board to withhold the officers’ pay.
City code enacted in 2007 says police officers “shall not solicit information concerning immigration status for the purpose of ascertaining a person’s compliance with federal immigration law.”
The Dec. 16 encounter, which was detected during an audit of body-camera footage, found an officer who was investigating a person with a felony warrant contact Border Patrol believing the individual was an illegal alien.
“Border Patrol did respond, and Border Patrol ultimately took this individual,” Bettison told the board, according to the Free Press.
The other suspended officer allegedly called Border Patrol on Feb. 9 for translation services for an individual who didn’t speak English during a traffic stop. Border Patrol detained the individual after finding they were not a U.S. citizen.
“Of our officers, 98-99 percent do it the right way each and every day,” Bettison said. “But I do have one or two percent that decide to violate our rules, our policies and our procedures, and to those officers, I will hold them accountable.”
According to the Free Press, the board will decide on whether to withhold the suspended officers’ pay at its Feb. 19 meeting.
While the city of Detroit claims itself to be a “Welcoming City” and not a “Sanctuary City,” a 2019 memo from the City Council’s Legislative Policy Division determined “there is no real distinction” between the two.
Federal agents have arrested at least 202 illegal aliens with criminal records in the state, The Midwesterner reported.
Meanwhile, Democrats in the state Legislature are pushing a package of bills that would put sanctuary policies such as banning agencies from sharing information with federal immigration enforcement into state law. Detroit City Council Member Gabriela Santiago-Romero testified in favor of the legislation last month.
Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who’s running for governor as an Independent, has toed the line of the Democratic Party when it comes to ICE, saying last month he was “sickened by the tragedy unfolding in Minneapolis” following the deadly shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti, who was armed.
