by Marty Green ·
Friday, January 30, 2026
When a bevy of black SUVs appeared on a local road earlier this month, several Harvard residents called police, expressing fears that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) had come to town. In fact, the vehicles were part of a Make-A-Wish Foundation project to take several children to a Celtics game.
But what would be the role of local police if ICE did come to Harvard? In an interview with the Press, Police Chief James Babu said he thought such an event was unlikely. But he explained the legal powers and limits his officers would have in that situation, based on state law and the U.S. Constitution.
First of all, Babu said ICE agents would probably not give local police any advance warning of their arrival. “What I hear from other places,” he said, “is they don’t give you any notice. They just do their thing.”
So what would Harvard police do, Babu was asked, if a resident called, saying, “There are masked guys banging on my door, trying to break it down”?
Babu replied, “We’d respond, absolutely. We don’t know what’s going on. It could be somebody trying to break into the house. So we’d still respond. But we’re not going to assist them [ICE] in any way.”
The basic rules for cooperation between local police and immigration officials, Babu explained, have been laid out in a legal advisory from the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. The advisory is based on a decision by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court in 2017, Commonwealth v. Lunn.
The Lunn ruling says Massachusetts police cannot hold a person in custody based on a federal civil immigration detainer. Such a detainer is only an administrative request from a federal agency. It does not have the force of a federal judicial arrest warrant. Holding someone under a civil detainer, according to the state advisory, would be an unlawful arrest.
“I’ll give you an example,” Babu said. “Let’s say we arrest somebody for drunk driving. When we bring them to the station, we put their fingerprints in an automatic fingerprint system, and it triggers that there’s someone that’s illegal, that’s overstayed [a visa], let’s say. A lot of times then, immigration will call and say, ‘Hey, we want you to hold them for us.’ But we can’t do that. I call the bail clerk. If the bail clerk says, ‘Release them, no bail,’ or ‘$40 bail,’ then that’s it. They’re free to go. We can’t hold them anymore. That was the Lunn decision.”
The situation is different, however, if ICE has a federal arrest warrant issued by a judge or if a person is suspected of a federal criminal offense. (Many immigration issues are considered civil infractions, not crimes.) In such cases, the state advisory says, local police should cooperate with ICE as they would with any other federal agency.
According to the state advisory, the constitutional principle of federalism limits what a federal agency such as ICE can require state or local police to do. While state and local authorities may choose to cooperate in enforcing federal immigration laws, they cannot be compelled to do so. The legal advisory describes this principle as “the anti-commandeering doctrine.”
At the same time, however, state and local police cannot block or interfere with federal immigration officials. Babu explained, “At the end of the day, we’re a law enforcement agency. We have to follow the rule of law. … We’ve been warned by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, if you interfere [with ICE operations], they’ll charge police officers and officials. So we can’t be unlawful and interfere with their operations. We don’t have to cooperate with the investigations, and they’re on their own. The only exception would be, like you see in the other states, where they get attacked. Then we have to respond.”
In such a situation, Babu said, he would be trying to keep the peace. But he also does not believe such a situation is likely to arise in Harvard. “I really don’t see [ICE] coming here, to be honest with you,” he said. “But it’s a tough situation. It’s going on throughout the country, and at the end of the day, I’m a police chief. … Number one, I don’t politicize the office or the Police Department. I don’t take stands on either side. I have to enforce the law and represent everybody.”