The person detained by immigration enforcement agents outside Cambridge police headquarters this month is a 35-year-old woman from Revere, Leidy Torres Castano, police said last week. Cambridge police had arrested her on suspicion of trying to steal cream worth $33 from a Central Square business and pushing an employee as she fled.
Though police refused to tell Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after the arrest whether Castano was in the police station, the routine check of her fingerprints with a national database to verify her identity probably tipped off Ice that she had been arrested, police said in a statement responding to questions from Cambridge Day.
Police commissioner Christine Elow told city councillors May 19 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waited outside police headquarters to detain a person who had been arrested by Cambridge officers. Police refused to tell the agents whether their target was still inside the building, Elow said. She did not identify the person Ice was seeking. Police named Castano last week in the department’s statement.
The statement revealed that Ice not only called police to ask about Castano, but after being turned down on the phone, several Ice agents came into the building lobby “and spoke with an officer, who again informed them that the department was not able to assist them in this matter.”
Castano was arrested May 10, a Saturday, at around 5:30 p.m. The store told police that an employee tried to resolve the matter without having her arrested but called police when she allegedly pushed a worker while fleeing, the police statement said. Police found her nearby.
“Later that night, Castano was released from Cambridge police custody on personal recognizance at the direction of a clerk magistrate. As she left the station, a member of the police department observed several Ice agents approach Castano and place her under arrest,” the police statement said. It went on: “The [Ice] arrest of Castano did not take place on police station property, there were no Cambridge police officers involved with the arrest and the department did not facilitate it.”
How did Ice know Castano had been arrested? “It is believed that Ice learned of this arrest after Castano had her fingerprints checked against a national database as part of the standard booking process. This standard procedure is done to all arrestees to confirm their identity,” the police statement said. The national FBI database is linked to a Department of Homeland Security database of people allegedly in the U.S. illegally, according to that agency. Immigrant advocates say the system alerts Ice of arrests, allowing agents to pick up migrants.
The owner of the three-family home in Revere where Castano reportedly lived said he did not know of her. Ice did not return a phone message asking where she had been taken.
She was charged with the misdemeanors of shoplifting by concealment and with assault and battery, according to court records. If convicted, the maximum penalty she faced on each charge was 100 days in jail. A search of court records in district courts covering locations near Cambridge, including Revere, didn’t show other charges against her.
Castano was supposed to show up in Cambridge District Court on May 12 to be arraigned. She didn’t appear and a judge issued a default warrant. The case has been marked as suspended.
A stronger
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Since the database is used as a standard part of the booking process of suspects it becomes obvious that the police will continue to trigger ICE whenever they use it for any immigrant, legally in the country or not that is in the database. This makes it impossible for the police not to be assisting in the persecution of people just by inquiry, not just those who have committed crimes but also the innocent that have been falsely accused or who’s prints may be encountered at the scene of an event that they take prints from because of the actions of another for the process of elimination from evidence, including victims. A Nasty Quandary.