'#teamsendthemback': Emails reveal cozy relationship, cooperation between NYC correction officers and ICE

City correction officers, who are largely barred from cooperating with federal immigration officials, on at least several occasions in recent years went above and beyond to coordinate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the deportation of incarcerated immigrants, according to a trove of emails unveiled during a City Council hearing on Wednesday.

DOC officers scheduled release times to facilitate ICE pickups, preemptively scheduled pickups for ineligible immigrants in their custody and shared unsolicited information that could be used to expedite removals, according to the emails.

The communications were at odds with current DOC policy restricting such cooperation, an agency official testified at the hearing. Some emails also appeared to violate city law restricting the DOC from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, immigration rights advocates and multiple City Council members said.

“The emails that you read are not our policy and should not have happened,” DOC General Counsel Paul Shechtman testified before the panel, adding that he was unaware if the communications conformed with past agency policies.

Emails introduced in the hearing were among hundreds between the DOC and ICE from 2015 to 2019 that were obtained by Immigrant Defense Project and Black Alliance for Just Immigration, pursuant to a public records request. Some of the communications were reviewed by Gothamist.

In a November 2015 email to an ICE official, DOC Captain Deshan Rainey shared the release time and next court date of a person in custody who was ineligible to be directly transferred to ICE. In that same email chain, highlighted during the Council hearing, she signed off twice, “#teamsendthemback” — a sentiment that rankled some councilmembers.

The emails that you read are not our policy and should not have happened.

Paul Shechtman, DOC general counsel

In another email chain three years later, Rainey solicited ICE for an official request to keep an incarcerated person in custody for an ICE pickup. Later in the same thread she told ICE employee Robert Sperruggia, “You are my BOO FOR REAL!!!!!!!!!!!”

While Shechtman argued that any misconduct evidenced in the referenced emails wouldn’t occur today, advocates say they fear ongoing collusion between the DOC and ICE. Councilmember Shahana Hanif, who chairs the Council's Immigration Committee and introduced the emails in her questioning, said that they revealed a “xenophobic culture.”

Councilmember Shekar Krishnan later added, “These emails show a culture – a pattern and practice – of DOC regularly cooperating with ICE in contradiction of the laws passed by this body.”

Shechtman objected to Hanif’s characterization, saying “xenophobic culture” suggested an ongoing problem.

“And I have no evidence of that. And, respectfully, I don’t think you have any evidence of that,” he said.

Restricted conduct

Under local law passed in 2014, on-duty DOC officers are generally not allowed to “expend time” or “resources” to share official department information about people in custody with federal immigration authorities, unless the person has been convicted of a “violent or serious” crime or is on a terrorist watch list.

For immigration detainers, requests to hold people in custody longer than normal in order to transfer them to ICE, local rules are even stricter. That person must have committed a “violent or serious” crime or be on a terrorist watchlist. And DOC staff must receive a judicial warrant, which agency officials have acknowledged only rarely occurs. Shechtman testified that the DOC hadn’t received a signed judicial warrant in the past five years.

The DOC has even narrower standard policies for communicating with ICE, according to agency officials’ testimony. If the DOC receives an ICE detainer, and the incarcerated individual doesn’t fit the necessary criteria – either having a qualifying conviction or being on a terrorist watchlist – the DOC won’t communicate further with ICE about that person, Shechtman said.

If the person matches the criteria, DOC will notify ICE when their discharge process begins – only about the release timing. He also said officers will not hold people for pickup beyond the time that they’re legally authorized to be released, which is three hours after they post bail.

“We’re not holding onto ‘em if ICE isn’t there,” Shechtman testified.

But the emails obtained by the immigration advocates paint a much cozier relationship between ICE and the DOC.

IDP identified at least four email chains in which DOC officers were communicating with ICE about people in custody who did not appear to have been convicted of a qualifying offense meeting the legal criteria for interagency communication. For example, in one December 2017 email chain referenced during the hearing, ICE officer Sperruggia sent the DOC a list of incarcerated people and asked if any met city criteria for immigration detainers. Rainey replied that one person must be adjudicated as a “youthful offender,” rather than being convicted, and the other two had pending cases. When Hanif referenced this email, Shechtman testified that communication appeared “not consistent with city law.”

Facilitating ICE pickups

IDP also identified several email chains where it claims DOC officers appear to delay individuals’ release – in some cases as much as a day – past the scheduled or usual time in order to facilitate an ICE pickup. In an April 2017 email referenced in the hearing, Rainey informed ICE of an incarcerated person who would be released and eligible for an immigration detainer. She wrote, “Please advise me what your arrival time will be so I may inform the facility and have the subject waiting for your arrival.”

When questioned about several emails, Shechtman maintained that past collaboration or coordination evidenced was squarely in the agency’s past.

“The proof in many ways, as they say, is in the pudding,” Shechtman said, adding that the DOC received 109 detainers and released eight people last fiscal year.

When asked about any discipline for failing to adhere to detainer laws, Shechtman referenced a 2019 incident where an officer was disciplined, and he uttered a phrase he repeated multiple times throughout the hearing: “It would not happen today.”

But advocates aren’t so sure. In the hearing, Hanif noted that Rainey is still employed at the DOC. Krishnan pointed to the DOC's continuing to release people in custody to ICE despite receiving no judicial warrants in the last five years.

To close what they see as “loopholes” in existing immigration detainer laws, immigration rights advocates are pushing for three bills they say would help prevent the coordination evidenced in the emails.

Councilmember Keith Powers has proposed a bill to prohibit the DOC from communicating with federal immigration authorities unless they’re talking about a person who has an immigration detainer the agency will honor, or if the information is unrelated to immigration enforcement.

Powers has also proposed a bill to prevent police from detaining people beyond their normal release time without a judicial warrant.

Hanif is pushing for a bill that would allow individuals held by police, the DOC, and the Department of Probation to sue for violations of the city’s immigration detainer laws.

This article was updated: The headline was changed and the spelling of Councilmember Shekar Krishnan's name was corrected.