On July 18 the Greenbelt City Council met with Interim Police Chief Thomas Kemp and Captain Gordon Pracht to continue its earlier discussions on how the Greenbelt Police Departmentshould handle interactions with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regarding requests to hold undocumented immigrants under ICE detainers. About 20 people attended the meeting, including representatives from Greenbelt People Power, CASA and Greenbelt Racial Equity Alliance as well as other Greenbelt residents. This topic had been raised several times over the last couple of years, sparked primarily by requests made at regular council meetings, but it was the worksession with Kemp and Pracht that appeared to make the difference in allowing councilmembers to come to a greater consensus on what the position of the city should be.
Another significant contributor to the discussion, who was not present at the meeting, was Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh. Kemp had provided a copy of the May 2017 Guidance Memorandum from Frosh titled “Local Enforcement of Federal Immigration Law: Legal Guidance for Maryland State and Loca lLaw Enforcement Officials, ”which helped a great deal in clarifying the issues and the law as they exist in Maryland.
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