A judicial warrant would be required for police to help ICE under Fire and Police Commission committee vote

There would be no exceptions to the requirement for a judicial warrant signed by a state or federal judge for Milwaukee police to assist in federal immigration enforcement actions under a policy revision approved by a Fire and Police Commission panel Thursday.

The revision would prohibit officers from assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the execution of administrative arrest warrants issued for people who have committed civil immigration violations, according to a revised Standard Operating Procedure 130.

The commission's Policies and Standards Committee approved the revision after an amendment submitted by immigrants rights group Voces de La Frontera.  

Language in the original revisions approved by Police Chief Alfonso Morales included exceptions to allow officers to assist in the execution of administrative warrants under six circumstances. They would have been when:

• A person is engaged in or is suspected of terrorism or espionage.
• The person is reasonably suspected of participating in a transnational criminal street gang.
• The person is arrested for any violent felony.
• The person is arrested for a sexual offense involving a victim who is a minor.
• The person is a previously deported felon.
• Any other serious felony demonstrates the person is a safety threat to the population at large.

But Shiu-Ming Cheer, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, argued that judicial warrants require probable cause and the burden to show probable cause to obtain such a warrant would be on ICE. 

State Rep. Marisabel Cabrera, D-Milwaukee, a former member of the commission and an immigration attorney, also argued that an administrative warrant for noncriminal civil violations provided no legal basis for Police Department involvement.

The committee voted unanimously to modify the revision to allow police assistance only when a judicial warrant is present and one of the conditions stated in the exceptions applies.  

Other revisions deal with language covering the arrest or detention of foreign nationals and foreign government officials with diplomatic immunity.

Before the meeting, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces, said in a statement that the exceptions were  "overbroad."

The exceptions "open the door to racial profiling and unconstitutional detentions and lead to unjust ICE detentions and deportations," Neumann-Ortiz said.

The revised policy will be voted on by the full commission Wednesday.