For the past few weeks, someone had been trying to break into Tukwila, Washington, resident Wilson Rodriguez Macarreno’s home and car. When he again saw someone trespassing on his property, he did what anyone else would do in the same situation: he called the police for help. But less than one hour later, he was the one in handcuffs, because Rodriguez Macarreno is an undocumented immigrant:
Police arriving on the scene apprehended a trespasser, according to Rodriguez’s attorney, Luis Cortes.
Officers then put Rodriguez in handcuffs after he gave them his ID for what he thought was “report purposes,” the lawyer said. Officers saw he had an outstanding warrant when they ran his information through the National Crime Information Center database.
According to Officer Victor Masters of the Tukwila Police Department, “it is standard procedure for Tukwila police to run victims, witnesses and suspects through NCIC to confirm their identity, Masters said. This procedure, in itself, is not unusual. The Seattle Police Department (SPD) and King County Sheriff’s Office do the same, according to spokesmen. What they don’t do is act on information in the database from immigration authorities”:
Tukwila police don’t usually act on ICE information they see in NCIC either, Masters said, nor do they ask about immigration status. But when the officers on the scene radioed in Rodriguez Macarreno’s name to dispatchers, who ran it through NCIC, what popped up looked different.
It was not just a note that ICE “was interested in speaking to the individual,” which is typical, according to Masters, but a warrant from the federal agency.
But according to Rodriguez Macarreno’s attorney, it was not an ICE warrant signed by a judge, but rather an administrative one. The former must be honored. The agency often uses the latter in their attempts to get local police departments to hold immigrants so they can come pick them up to arrest them. So while “police told The Seattle Times they did not have probable cause to arrest the trespasser,” Rodriguez Macarreno is now the one sitting in a detention facility.