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EXCLUSIVE: Internal NYS court documents obtained by @mazsidahmed and I show that court officers have proactively alerted ICE about immigrants in courts. Court administration long insisted that officers have only assisted in arrests to preserve safety documentedny.com/2019/01/26/doc…
Unusual Occurrence Reports filed after ICE arrests reveal incidents in 2017 in which ICE agents asked court officers for a heads-up on targets appearing in court. In this example, an ICE agent left a business card with an NY court officer, who later called the agent 
NYS Courts downplayed the incidents. Spox: "of the four incidents that you reference, two occurred just as we began to track ICE interactions in our courts and before we issued a new policy, in April 2017." Yet the new policy does not specifically address officer/ICE cooperation
Court officers' union president Dennis Quirk denied impropriety. "We have to preserve safety. By cooperating with ICE... we’re able to accomplish that... When they start pouncing on [targets] in the hallway, that’s worse. It’s much better when people are taken discreetly."
Quirk downplayed the distinction between a warrant signed by a judge and an administrative warrant ICE issues itself. "We’re not lawyers that determine what kind of a warrant somebody has, if they have a piece of paper that says it’s a warrant, a warrant for somebody, that’s it.”
One attorney for a man that was arrested as a result of court officer / ICE cooperation blamed his client's conviction in part on having been detained during his criminal case, arguing the jury viewed it negatively. "That’s obviously prejudicial," he said.
