MEDFORD, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is weighing in on the standoff between two Massachusetts DAs and Federal ICE agents who are coming into state courthouses to arrest undocumented immigrant.
“It’s really hard to believe that what happened here really happened here,” Pelosi said.
The House Speaker was at Tufts University in Medford on Friday touring the Eliot-Pearson Children's School and hear about the school's approach to early childhood education research.
She made those remarks to WBZ NewsRadio’s Mike Macklin on the recent incitement a Massachusetts District Court judge and a former Newton District Court officer have been indicted on obstruction of justice charges after the U.S. Attorney's office alleged they kept an ICE officer from taking a man into custody.
Judge Shelley Richmond Joseph, 51 of Natick, and court officer Wesley MacGregor, 56 of Watertown, were indicted on one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice and two counts of aiding and abetting obstruction of justice.
They're accused of letting a man who was wanted by ICE for being in the country illegally escape out the back of the courthouse to avoid the ICE agent who was waiting inside the building to take him into custody.
“We’re a nation of immigrants. Some people are not fully documented, how do we deal with that? And that doesn’t mean that law enforcement become immigration officers,” she said.
Prosecutors, public defenders, and community groups in Massachusetts have sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over its policy of arresting people at courthouses on civil immigration matters.
Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins and Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan cite that these civil arrests at court houses create a disrupting effect in the court system addingthat they can’t prosecute some cases because the people involved are too afraid to come to court.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Mike Macklin (@MikeMacklinWBZ) reports.