BOSTON — A judge in Boston is holding a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in contempt after he detained a suspect while the man was on trial.
ICE agent Brian Sullivan detained Wilson Martell-Lebron last week as he was leaving court. But a Boston Municipal Court judge issued a ruling Monday against Sullivan, arguing that he had deprived Martell-Lebron of his rights to due process and a fair trial by taking him into custody.
“It’s a case of violating a defendant’s right to present at trial and confront witnesses against him,” Judge Mark Summerville said from the bench. “It couldn’t be more serious.”
Summerville dismissed the charge against Martell-Lebron of making false statements on his driver’s license application — namely that he wasn’t Martell-Lebron. After that, Summerville filed the contempt charge against Sullivan, which could lead Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden review the case to determine if any charges should be filed.
“It’s reprehensible,” Ryan Sullivan, one of Martell-Lebron’s lawyers said. “Law enforcement agents have a job to see justice is done. Prosecutors have a job to see justice is done. There is no greater injustice in my mind than the government arresting someone, without identifying themselves, and preventing them from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to a jury trial.”
A spokesman for ICE did not return a call seeking comment.
The move by ICE is the latest effort to target Boston over its handling of immigration.
President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and Republicans in Congress have accused the city of failing to cooperate to get people charged with violent crimes deported. Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat up for reelection this year, said she wants Boston be a welcoming place for immigrants and that city policies limit cooperation with immigration enforcement.
Sullivan described a tense scene, in which ICE agents pounced on Martell-Lebron without identifying themselves, put him into a pickup truck and sped away. The trial Thursday had just begun with opening statements and the first witnesses.
Sullivan said Martell-Lebron, who is from the Dominican Republic and living with family in Massachusetts, is now at the Plymouth detention facility for allegedly being an undocumented immigrant, he said.
“What we were challenging is that they arrested him in the middle of his trial and did not return him,” he said. “If he had been brought to court on Friday morning by ICE, we would not have moved to dismiss. We would not be asking for sanctions. We would have just finished the trial.”
Immigration officers were a growing presence at courthouses during Trump’s first term, prompting some pushback from judges and other local officials. Trump has gone further in his second term by repealing a policy in place since 2011 to generally avoid schools, places of worship and hospitals.
Under current policy, immigration officials can make arrests “in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present” and as long as they are not prohibited by state or local law.
During the two-day hearing, Sullivan said that the lead prosecution witnessed confirmed that both the Massachusetts State police and prosecutors were aware of ICE plans to arrest Martell-Lebron.
In a statement, state police said they acted appropriately after learning of the plans of ICE. “As in any situation where a member becomes aware of federal immigration enforcement, the Troopers responded appropriately by neither assisting nor obstructing the federal action,” the statement said.
James Borghesani, a spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said “we were dismayed and surprised when our prosecution of Wilson Martell-Lebron was interrupted by ICE apprehending him in the middle of his trial.”
“Any claim that we were aware of an attempt to prevent Mr Martell-Lebron from exercising his right to a trial is false.,” he said in a statement. “It was our intention to try Mr. Martell-Lebron and hold him accountable for the crimes alleged in the complaint. Federal authorities should not have detained him and interfered with our efforts to hold him accountable.”
The contempt case has been referred to the Suffolk district attorney’s office and a spokesman there said they were looking into it.
During Trump’s first term, the judicial system in the state wrestled with how to respond to ICE.
Two district attorneys in Massachusetts sued the federal government in 2019 seeking to prevent arrests at courthouses but dropped the case when former President Joe Biden took office.
Newton District Judge Shelley Joseph also faced charges – which were later dropped — of helping a man who was living in the U.S. illegally evade an immigration enforcement agent. The charges were dropped after she agreed to refer herself to a state agency that investigates allegations of misconduct by members of the bench.