District attorney considers charging ICE agent after defendant is detained mid-trial in Boston
Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said he is weighing whether to bring charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after a defendant was detained outside a Boston courthouse last week in the middle of his trial.
Wilson Martell-Lebron, who is from the Dominican Republic and was living with family in Massachusetts, was on trial for allegedly pretending to be someone else in his driver's license application. His lawyers say ICE agents who did not identify themselves put him in a pickup truck as he was leaving court, and he's now being held at a detention facility in Plymouth.
On Monday, Boston Municipal Court Judge Mark Summerville held ICE agent Brian Sullivan in contempt, ruling that he was "violating the defendant's right to be present at trial and confront witnesses against him." It's up to Hayden to decide whether any charges should be filed against the agent.
"That's under consideration, that's under review," Hayden said at a news conference on Wednesday. "That order to us was just recently given, we have a lot to go over in this case before we can determine exactly how it is that we're going to proceed."
The judge dismissed the charge against Martell-Lebron of filing a false statement after he was detained.
Hayden called the move to detain a defendant in the middle of a trial "troubling and extraordinary reckless." He also said victims and witnesses of crimes are becoming less likely to cooperate with investigators due to fears about ICE.
"ICE routinely claims that their actions are improving public safety in Boston and I'm here today to tell you and to say that they are doing the exact opposite," he said. "This action by ICE was troubling and extraordinarily reckless."
Last month, President Trump's "border czar" Tom Homan announced the arrest of 370 "illegal aliens" in Massachusetts. He later said many of the arrests included "collaterals" who have not committed crimes in the country.
ICE has not commented publicly on this case yet. U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley has filed a motion in support of the ICE agent that asks a federal court to vacate the contempt order.
"Our motion is clear: the state court lacked authority to issue the unlawful and erroneous order. The Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution immunizes federal officers from state prosecution—including contempt proceedings—for actions taken in the course of their official duties," said Foley in a statement.
Defendant's lawyer criticizes DA
Martell-Lebron's lawyer Murat Erkan in an interview with WBZ-TV criticized Hayden for "misleading the public about what in fact happened." He says text messages and testimony in court show the district attorney's office was "fully aware" of ICE's plan to remove the defendant in the middle of his trial.
"An individual accused of a crime being snatched up and disappeared by a fully blackened-out motor vehicle by undercover agents who were wearing no visible signs of their badge of office," said Erkan.
The defense points to a group chat between the ICE agent and two Massachusetts State Police sergeants, in which the agent says the plan was to "grab him on the way out."
"This is an absolute cover-up, there's no other way to put it," Erkan said.
Hayden strongly denied the allegations on Wednesday.
"Our prosecutors acted ethically and responsibly and did absolutely nothing wrong, and there is no credible evidence, none whatsoever, that our prosecutors knew that ICE was going to remove Mr. Martell-Lebron in the middle of the trial," Hayden said.
State Police said in a statement that the troopers involved "responded appropriately by neither assisting nor obstructing the federal action."
Immigration arrests at courthouses
Immigration officers were a growing presence at courthouses during President 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 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.
