News > Immigration In Minnesota
Cell phone video caught MTC officer asking immigration status – the rest of the story still unfolding
Posted on Jun 13 2017
This incident occurred on the Minneapolis Blue Line light rail train, northbound on Sunday, May 14, 2017. Question of the Day: why are Metro Transit Police asking people's immigration status???
Posted by Ricardo Levins Morales on Friday, May 19, 2017
On Mother’s Day, Ricardo Levins Morales filmed an MTC officer asking Ariel Vences-Lopez about his immigration status. That’s not supposed to happen, but it did. Later, Vences-Lopez was arrested and tasered, then held in custody by the Hennepin County Sheriff, then turned over to immigration officials. As of June 12, when this article was written, an emergency stay of removal had been granted while the immigration court considers motions submitted by his attorneys. Vences-Lopez is represented by Danielle Robinson Briand in the immigration proceeding and another attorney is representing him in the Hennepin County court proceedings.
MTC has said the officer had no business asking about immigration status, that this is not their policy or practice.
“This afternoon, community members and partners alerted me to a situation in which one of my part time officers was witnessed asking an individual whether he was in the state illegally. I immediately called for an Internal Affairs investigation to gather the details about this incident and to report back to me as quickly as possible.
“It is not the practice of the Metro Transit police to inquire about the immigration status of our riders. …”
The officer who questioned Vences-Lopez resigned from the MTC, where he worked part-time, but is still employed as a full-time police officer in New Hope.
The MTC officer asking about legal status was only the first violation of policy and practice – Vences-Lopez was held in secret, his name was “redacted” from the MTC arrest report, and inquiries about the case were stalled, evaded, or just not answered. According to the Pioneer Press, which followed the story closely, officials said that the report contained all the information that would be released. When the newspaper pressed MTC to identify the specific provision of the state Data Privacy Act that authorized hiding the name of the person arrested, they conferred with attorneys and then finally released his name.
A carefully documented blog post by Tony Webster, who identifies himself as a “web engineer, public records researcher, and policy nerd,” raises important questions, including:
“Surely the Chief knew his officer had tasered the young man and booked him into jail, so why did the public find out for the first time on May 24 that he went to jail, and on May 25 that he was tasered?
“Was the arrest record suppressed from public view, or was it just a coincidence of timing? Is there a policy on when arrests are suppressed from the jail roster and the reasons why an arrest can be manually suppressed?”
Webster included links to the official statements from the MTC and Hennepin County Sheriff in his blog post on May 27, observing:
“Neither statement addresses the full gamut of questions, nor details the timeline in how Metro Transit addressed the controversy. The statements said Metro Transit found out the man was in ICE custody because a Pioneer Press reporter told them so, late Friday night. Chair Duininck said prior to learning of the deportation order, the agency was working on possibly placing the Metro rider in a diversion program or having charges dropped.
“Both statements seemed to imply Metro Transit was given false information, perhaps by officials at the Hennepin County jail. Chief Harrington stated, “we understood that Vences-Lopez had been released from the custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office,” and Chair Duininck said, “At the time we were told the rider had been released from custody, he had actually been in ICE custody for nearly a week.” The statements promised to look into why the agency was allegedly given inaccurate information, and promised to uncover “what went wrong.”