Contributed Photo
ICE agents stake out courthouse office seeking immigrant.
Ed Finlayson.
• “ICE is here.”
• Court security screener, who lives in Goatville, hires Pattis to fight dismissal.
• Kica Matos: “Instead of being fired, he should be celebrated.”
• Larger battle looms over feds’ presence in state courthouses.
Edward Finlayson, a 36-year-old Goatville resident, learned that nuance in the state judiciary’s immigration enforcement policy when he was fired from his job.
A supervisor kicked him out of the state’s Judicial Marshal Services last month after concluding that Finlayson tipped off an undocumented immigrant that he was being tailed by agents from U.S. Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In late October, Finlayson was manning the metal detector at the front of the Derby courthouse when four plainclothes ICE agents tried to apprehend Domar Shearer, a Jamaican immigrant who’d overstayed his visa and was facing two sets of misdemeanor domestic-violence charges.
While Finlayson radioed his supervisors, Shearer hid in the public-defender’s office.
Activists from Unidad Latina En Acción soon arrived to stand guard. After a six-hour standoff with ICE agents, Shearer escaped to a Howe Street safe house.
According to a 14-page investigation that was released to the Independent last week through the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act, the five-minute delay that Finlayson created foiled ICE’s plans. After a prosecutor complained the following week that Finlayson asked to see warrant, he eventually lost his job.
In a text message, Finlayson declined to comment, directing questions to his lawyers.
“We are in for that effort to get his job back,” said Norm Pattis, his lawyer. “We’re urging the Judicial Department to come to the table in a good-faith effort to resolve this.” (The Connecticut Post’s Michael Mayko first reported on the firing.)
Rhonda Hebert, a spokesperson for the state courts, said that judicial marshals “cannot prohibit, impede nor assist ICE agents” from entering or even arresting someone in the courthouse. She said that once ICE agents identify themselves, the judicial marshals should ask them to sign a log book of law enforcement personnel and let them in. She added that ICE agents “on official business” can carry guns as long as they’re not visible in the courtroom.
Christopher Peak Photo
ULA’s activists celebrate with Shearer after escaping from ICE.
Immigrants rights advocates in New Haven have criticized ICE for lying in wait at courthouses, sometimes with prosecutors’ help, to nab undocumented immigrants who are trying to resolve their cases. They’ve been able to interrupt some of those arrests in a few suburban courthouses.
They said that the judicial system’s latest personnel decision seems to undercut the Connecticut Trust Act. That groundbreaking state law, passed in 2013 and revised in 2019, is supposed to prohibit local police, state troopers and court marshals from assisting ICE agents who don’t have a judicial warrant, unless they’re tracking down suspected terrorists or convicted felons.
The advocates thanked Finlayson for stopping Shearer’s deportation. They advised him to get a good employment lawyer.
“Dr. [Martin Luther] King once said, ‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.’ By protecting immigrants in the courthouse, Mr. Finlayson acted with great courage,” said Kica Matos, an immigrants rights advocate. “Instead of being fired, he should be celebrated.”
Eugene Driscoll Photo
Outside the Derby courthouse, where ICE and ULA faced off in October 2019.
On Oct. 31, 2019, at 9:09 a.m., Shearer walked into the Derby courthouse and cleared the metal detector where Finlayson was stationed. As he collected his things from the X‑ray machine, three plainclothes ICE agents walked in, flashed a badge to Finlayson and pointed to Shearer.
According to two ICE agents, David Hamilton and James Schiavone, Finlayson said, “Oh, it’s you guys, it’s our policy not to let you in.”
Finlayson denied saying that. Dolores Weingerl, the other judicial marshal at the metal detector, said, “I did not hear that.” And Kenneth Grohs, another judicial marshal on duty nearby, said he didn’t recall that either.
As Shearer walked into the lobby and stood in front of the clerk’s office, trying to find his courtroom, Finlayson told the ICE agents they’d have to wait until he got clearance. He made a call downstairs to his supervisor, Lt. James Fraulo, who asked if they had weapons.
According to the ICE agents, Hamilton and Schiavone, Finlayson practically yelled into the phone, loudly announcing that immigration agents were in the building. “ICE is here,” they reported hearing.
Finlayson again denied saying that. But this time, Weingerl, the other judicial marshal, said, “I heard something to that effect.” Grohs again said he did not.
Finlayson told the ICE agents to step into the foyer. Hamilton asked if they were being denied entry. Schiavone reported Finlayson said, “Yeah.” Finlayson remembered saying it was up to his supervisor, not him. Two sets of automatic doors closed behind them.
Christopher Peak Photo
Domar Shearer.
Grohs said that Finlayson should have just let the ICE agents sign the log book and walk in. “It didn’t go down right,” he later told an investigator.
For another two minutes, Finlayson kept screening people in line.
At 9:14 a.m., Shearer walked off down a hallway, heading toward the public defender’s office. Finlayson followed and went inside.
A moment later, Diana Gomez, a public defender, stepped out of her office with Finlayson; she walked back inside, this time with Shearer. Finlayson returned to the metal detector.
Asked by an investigator what he was doing, Finlayson said, “I went to to the Public Defender’s Office? I don’t remember going to the Public Defender’s Office.” Shown stills of him with Gomez outside the office, he asked if there were any shots of him “talking to anyone.”
Three minutes later, Finlayson answered a call from Louis Speringo, the chief judicial marshal, but he said it was hard to hear so went downstairs to meet Lt. Fraulo by lock-up to have him tell the ICE agents what they needed to do to come inside.
At 9:22 a.m., Fraulo came up with Finlayson to let the ICE agents inside, after asking them to fill out an entry in the court’s log book on a clipboard.
Finlayson later said that he waited for his supervisor because he didn’t know what the normal procedures were. He said that he continued to make them wait because that’s what his supervisor instructed him to do.
“I was not telling them anything that I was not told to do,” Finlayson said. “I never made any sort of announcement in the hallway. I didn’t follow anyone anywhere.”
Hamilton, the ICE agent, complained, “knew what he was doing, he impeded and interfered with our operation.” He added that he expected that from a public defender, not someone with a badge. He said, “I’ve never encountered this kind of obstruction by another law enforcement agency.”
In his closing report, Jon Lucas, a program manager for the personnel services unit, concluded that Finlayson had “aided the ICE suspect in seeking refuge in the Public Defender’s Office which directly impeded the enforcement actions of the ICE agents.” He said that Finlayson violated more than a dozen policies in the judicial marshal services’ code of ethics and conduct.
Lucas added that, a week later, Finlayson demanded a warrant from Robert Nash, an investigator for the State’s Attorney’s Office, for two individuals they were transporting downstairs to lock-up with a pair of Shelton Police Department detectives. Nash complained that Finlayson “had no business intervening,” and said the Shelton detectives “could not believe how [he] had acted.” Lucas said that violated another nine policies.
In a one-page termination letter, Maria Kewer, the deputy director of the personnel services unit, cited a ream of policy violations that she said gave her “just cause” to fire Finlayson.
She said he allowed “personal feelings, prejudices, animosities” to get in the way of his duties; wasn’t “diligent, efficient, courteous and respectful”; interfered with his coworkers’ productivity; didn’t follow laws, regulations or directives; acted in a way that “could undermine the order, efficiency or discipline” of the courts; and didn’t cooperate “fully and truthfully” in the investigation.
Kewer told Finlayson that his employment ended immediately, and that he had five days to turn in his uniforms and equipment.
Finlayson’s union has filed a grievance. Its president, Joe Gaetano, said he couldn’t discuss other details of the case.
Activists protest against ICE’s courthouse arrests in 2018.
John Lugo, the ULA organizer who showed up to the courthouse, said that the investigation into Finlayson’s actions showed “a lot of collaboration” between ICE agents and judicial marshals.
Michael Wishnie, a Yale Law School professor, said the judicial marshals have been “an outlier” among state law enforcement agencies “in their eagerness to facilitate ICE arrests of Connecticut residents.”
He pointed to a recent Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance report that showed, over a year-long period, judicial marshals kept 50 people in detention until ICE agents could pick them up, 78 percent of the time for reasons that even the state prison system would’ve rejected.
John Lugo: “He did the right thing.”
Lugo said that the court administrator needs to set clearer policies, and if he doesn’t, the legislature needs to.
“This poor guy, I guess he misunderstood the Trust Act and he got fired for that. He paid the consequences for doing the right thing,” Lugo said. “We really need to stop this. The way to resolve this is for the court administrator to create some policy: They need to ask ICE agents not to be inside of courthouses.”
Last week, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong joined the top lawyers from 12 other states in asking a federal judge in Washington State to stop ICE from arresting immigrants in and around state courthouses.
In an amicus brief that cited the Independent’s reporting, the attorneys general said that “standoffs with ICE agents have disrupted entire days of proceedings at state courthouses” in Connecticut. They said that upended centuries of precedent, dating back to an 1822 legal treatise from Connecticut’s chief judge, prohibiting arrests while parties appear in court, enter or leave.
Kica Matos: “Instead of being fired, he should be celebrated.”
Matos said ICE’s presence in courthouses creates a “gross miscarriage of justice.”
“Our judicial buildings are meant to be places where due process and justice are delivered. Instead, ICE is hunting immigrants in our courthouses, making them places of terror for undocumented residents,” Matos said. “Our communities are less safe when immigrants who witness crimes are afraid to speak out or when women facing domestic violence do not get protective orders for fear of going into a state building.”
“No one,” she continued, “is ever served when people are prevented from accessing justice.”
Women and other victims of domestic violence will be safer if we deport those who are likely to have committed domestic violence, such as Shearer. Lugo and his group embrace the criminal migrants, such as drunk drivers, child rapists, etc.