Baltimore is in the midst of a murderous year, perhaps its worst ever, so you will pardon us if we find little amusing about the recent letter from U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions warning Baltimore Police Commissioner
Kevin Davis that
the city will be ineligible for federal aid under the National Public Safety Partnership program (which is aimed at just the kind of violence that plagues Baltimore) unless he does the impossible — require a jail controlled by the state, not the city, to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement to a level Maryland’s attorney general has already warned is unconstitutional. The absurdity of the letter is only outdone by its moral bankruptcy. The state has been in charge of city prisoners since 1991, a detail Mr. Sessions’ esteemed deputy, former Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, surely stumbled across during his wide-ranging investigation into corruption at the now closed Baltimore City Detention Center several years ago. But then we doubt this particular initiative was vetted by anyone with expertise in actual justice.
At the heart of this repugnancy are administrative detainers. Those are the requests made to local jails by
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcementto detain inmates suspected of breaking immigration laws for up to 48 hours after they’re scheduled to be released. No probable cause, no due process, no judicial oversight. A lot of jurisdictions are refusing them on similar constitutional grounds — they amount to a second arrest of a suspect in a manner that not only tramples their rights but is fundamentally harmful to public safety. What kind of country jails people without cause? What message does that send to the immigrant community and and what damage does it do to efforts to cultivate trust with police? Why target people who are actually less likely to commit crimes than average Americans?
But let’s leave the merits of detainers aside. A handful of cities across the country are getting similar threatening letters from Mr. Sessions, but how is it that the U.S. Department of Justice and its 113,000 or so employees can’t do a quick Internet search and figure out Baltimore doesn’t control the local jail? The first rule of any blackmail scheme is, after all, to make sure that the victim has something the perpetrator wants. It’s not within the power of Commissioner Davis, Mayor Catherine Pugh or anyone else in or around City Hall to set policy on detainers. Perhaps, Mr. Sessions, we might interest you in something else? A supportive note from Mayor Pugh to President
Donald Trump the next time he’s in town? Some used Confederate monuments?
Incidentally, it’s not even clear that state authorities would refuse to cooperate with ICE detainer requests. The current word is that under Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, such requests are now considered on a case-by-case basis. And, by the way, the state has no record of having received one since January of 2015. How many layers of ridiculousness can one letter hold?
