By Gabbie Burton
Contributing Writer

While our local communities here in southern Chester County are no strangers to the presence of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), recent developments happening in Minnesota and in the federal government have placed them front and center in the national conversation. Immigration attorney Lindsey Sweet of Sweet and Paciorek, LLC in Avondale recently sat down with the Chester County Press to discuss the escalation of ICE activities and the legal and local impacts these developments have.

Chester County Press: How long have you been practicing immigration law, and why did you choose immigration law as a career?

Sweet: This is my 17th year practicing immigration law. I am the granddaughter of German Jewish refugees that came to the United States fleeing persecution, and I have always seen it as my need to provide refuge and a safe place to be for immigrants seeking refuge in this country. 

I also have worked with the immigrant community in Chester County since graduating from college. I’ve lived in Mexico. I’ve worked for the Chester County migrant education program. There was the combination of my own personal background, with the knowledge that the needs of this community were also great, both for those seeking refuge, but also those seeking to remain here in a safe place and work and live and prosper in the same way that my family also wanted to.

If ICE has always been in the area, and you said that you’ve been practicing for 17 years now, has there been a moment in your career so far that compares to this one?

There were whispers of this during the first Trump administration. There was like a testing of the waters and justice prevailed, and then that was the end of it. I think the difference now is that the attack is not just on immigrants themselves but there’s also a changing of who the judges are that are hearing these cases. The motions to suppress arrests that we have filed under this current administration have been denied. So, the backstop that was there during the first administration appears to no longer be there. But yes, we saw how this could have gone under the prior administration, but it was stopped by the court system.

Going back to what you were saying about the “backstop” being gone, what are some implications of those changes and new rules that you are now dealing with in your work?

There were two cases that came out from the Board of Immigration Appeals that limited the immigration judge’s right to grant release from custody if someone is detained. At this point, because of that limited jurisdiction by the immigration judge, we’ve had to go above the immigration judge’s head to the federal district court and get a federal district judge to issue release.

What has been happening is, in some cases, the federal district judges are just ordering release, and in other cases, they’re ordering the immigration judge to hear a bond hearing. In those bond hearings, the judges are then saying, “I’ll listen to your arguments, but this person is still a danger to the community. There’s still a flight risk, and I’m going to deny bond based on those.” So even though the judge is abiding by this order, the whole point of the order was to have this person released under a bond that was appropriate for their flight risk. But the judges are saying, “I’m still not going to release you,” so it’s kind of like it doesn’t matter.

If the case is rigged from the beginning and you were never going to release him, even if I had a right to ask you to release him, then kind of what is the point? That's the concern. We’re going through all of these motions without ever having a chance of winning, that everything is stacked against us from the beginning. And ICE knows that the Department of Homeland Security knows that, they're banking on that. It’s like two parties in this process are working together to make sure that no one ever wins.

While the current media focus of ICE is in Minneapolis, what has been happening in terms of its presence in Chester County?

So far, we really have been blessed to have a longer standing relationships with Enforcement and Removal Operations in Philadelphia and they have been abiding by the rule of law and we haven’t seen what we have been seeing in Minnesota. I fear, or kind of know, that a lot of that has to do with the numbers, and that there just aren’t enough ICE agents or other federal law enforcement agents that are working together with ICE in order to do these mass operations in the community. If that were to change, I don’t doubt that we would see the exact same thing here that we are there. Right now, I think we're blessed that there aren’t the numbers of agents and this is not – politically yet – it's not our turn, but I don’t doubt that’s coming, but it’s a question of, “In what capacity?”

How often do you hear about raids in the area? What is the scale that we’re at?

We hear about targeted enforcement actions every day, from social media or clients calling. We hear about them routinely at the Magisterial District Court locally. In fact, it’s almost expected at this point that ICE will be present when there is criminal court in session. The numbers of people being detained are still limited. It’ll be one or two in a targeted enforcement action. We’re not seeing the mass levels of the kind of collateral arrest that we’ve seen elsewhere. It definitely seems to still be targeted based on criminal contact or an old removal order that has yet to be executed. So that's a distinction between what we’re seeing locally and what we’re seeing elsewhere.

Say someone’s family member was detained by ICE and they contact you. What happens next?

The initial thing would be to do a consultation with the family member that has the most information about them to determine their history. Did they already have contact with ICE or Customs and Border Patrol at entry many years ago? So that I can determine what remedies are available to them.

I would never just take a case without having enough information to make sure that it’s worth fighting, because it’s not always worth fighting. That’s the realization that sometimes it’s really difficult for families to understand that this battle was lost 20 years ago when your family member was removed at the border with Mexico, and unfortunately, your family member has been operating as a fugitive for the past 20 years, maybe without even knowing it.

Once we do take on one of those cases, we have to act very quickly. It’s really fast. It’s a question of making sure that it’s worth the time and effort and money to move quickly, because not all cases can be won.

What are someone’s legal rights when it comes to ICE?

I guess that’s part of the concern that we had at the beginning of the conversation is that there were rights that I believe are still true and that are held by every person that is physically in the United States, which is the right to due process, to have your case heard before an unbiased arbiter before you’re removed from the United States, the right to not be subject to unlawful searches and seizures, law enforcement not enter a private residence without having a judicial order. However, the boundaries of that are being pushed right now. That is still the law, but ICE is operating outside of that law.

All of these well-established rights that we thought were unable to be changed because they were clarified under the Constitution and its amendments are now being put into question. So that’s why our footing is a little unstable right now, but the bottom line is even if someone is detained unlawfully, they still should have a right to due process and to have their case heard in a court system that is not rigged against them from the beginning.

If these agencies are operating outside of the law, what can you do?

This entire country is based on the rule of law. Permanent residents who are looking to become naturalized US citizens, that's one of the questions that is asked during the citizenship exam. What is this nation based on? It’s based on the rule of law. The Constitution is the basis for this country and if that’s no longer being respected or its questioned and there’s no backstop from the judicial system, I don’t know who we are anymore.

To contact Contributing Writer Gabbie Burton, email [email protected].