For almost a year, Maine State Police troopers were told they could hold people on the side of the road to wait for immigration officials, even if they didn’t suspect criminal conduct.

That guidance was mentioned briefly in an email that Department of Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck sent to staff in December. In announcing that the agency would preemptively begin following a new state law to limit local police cooperation with immigration officials, he revealed that state police would be changing its “internal referral policy immediately.”

Yet, when the Press Herald last year requested all copies of any “policies, memos, directives or resources” addressing how Maine State Police officers communicate with Border Patrol agents, the agency didn’t provide anything specifically related to immigration enforcement.

The department referred a reporter to its policies posted online in July and stated that anything else was considered investigative and exempt from the state’s public records laws.

After Sauschuck’s announcement, the Press Herald asked for a copy of the policy he mentioned and was given a March email from a troop commander that recaps how troopers should notify the chain of command when Border Patrol is called in during “the normal investigative process.”

The email, which was sent to 12 others in troop leadership, goes on to detail how troopers had the authority to hold people for federal agents, even when there was no criminal conduct.

MSP Operations Meeting Immigration Enforcement Final by julia

Sauschuck said they were altering that guidance when he announced in December that the agency would begin following the new law to bar Maine law enforcement officers from collaborating with the federal immigration agencies — months before the law actually takes effect.

Before making that change, troopers had called ICE and Border Patrol to help identify suspects 63 times over a nine and a half month span, Sauschuck stated.

The new law, which takes effect for all Maine law enforcement agencies this summer, will prohibit officers from investigating, detaining or searching a person solely for immigration enforcement purposes.

Advocates for immigrant rights, including the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, have spent the last year tracking local police activities, including traffic stops, that have led to immigration arrests.

They have said they hope the new law will keep Maine cities and counties from getting involved in what the Maine ACLU called “federal abuses of power,” and that it will foster more trust in local law enforcement.

The Maine Chiefs of Police Association has said that under the new law, immigrants, “including those with serious criminal backgrounds, could be released back into our communities simply because local agencies would be barred from cooperating” with the federal government’s warrants that haven’t been signed by a judge or their requests for information.

PUBLIC RECORDS REQUESTS

When the Press Herald asked for any “policies, memos, directives or resources” in a July 8 public records request, Director of Policy, FOAA and Legislative Affairs Rebecca Graham referred a reporter to the agency’s policies available online.

The Press Herald’s request included materials given “to Maine State Police officers regarding when and how they can contact members of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” as well as any directives for traffic stops in which a passenger doesn’t speak English or possesses a license from another country.

The Press Herald had also sought similar materials in a request for department-wide policies on April 1 and were referred to online materials that did not address the agency’s contact with ICE or Border Patrol.

When asked why the policy Sauschuck referred to recently was not turned over under the previous requests, Graham and Maine State Police spokesperson Shannon Moss said he had been talking about an email sent to state troopers in March.

“It is not a Maine State Police wide memo, directive, or policy,” Moss wrote.

Sigmund Schutz, an attorney for the Press Herald who specializes in the state’s public records laws, said he believes the email should have been included in response to the newspaper’s previous requests.

“It’s not obvious to me that they had even taken diligent steps to determine whether such documents existed,” Schutz said. “I assume that if they had done this analysis they would have determined if it was releasable.”

He said the agency had a “good-faith obligation” to provide the type of information and records requested and that complying with the state’s public records law “should not be playing games with semantics.”

“My view is that this has been a public record since day one,” Schutz said. “It shouldn’t be like pulling teeth to get access to public records.”

MARCH EMAIL

The March email from the troop commander states: “these guidelines have been put in place” to ensure that troopers were operating “the same statewide regarding this widely publicized hot button topic.”

The email stated that troopers had the authority to hold people for federal agents, even when there had been no criminal conduct.

“If you have no criminal conduct and the feds are not coming to your location, you can not detain them and take them to jail,” according to the email. “If you have no criminal conduct and the feds are willing to come to you, you are all set to detain the individual until the feds arrive and take custody.”

Troopers were expected to tape entire incidents using their cruiser and body cameras, according to the email, and to “please remember this and use caution when speaking to Border Patrol.”

Troopers also were expected to notify on-duty supervisors before making any calls to Border Patrol and to write reports detailing the incidents by the end of their shift, including “what steps were taken to ID the individual and why,” according to the email.

It also said that if an officer did not suspect any underlying criminal conduct, they had “no legal right” to force someone to identify themselves.

In police reports and body camera footage reviewed by the Press Herald, state police have obtained identification from drivers and passengers for offenses that included not wearing a seat belt or being in a car with someone operating with a suspended license.

In at least two traffic stops last year, a trooper detained people for more than an hour while waiting for Border Patrol agents to arrive, according to body camera footage.

CALLS TO IMMIGRATION OFFICIALS

Sauschuck said in his email that state police had called immigration officials 63 times since March, which he calculated was “approximately 0.1% of the time over that 9.5-month period.” He wrote that the new law will not affect “99.9%” of typical state police cases.

One stop during that time period happened on Memorial Day, when Lucas Segobia, a Brazilian man, was detained by Border Patrol. A trooper pulled Segobia and his friend over because he said he didn’t see their license plate, which was not in the center of the front bumper.

Segobia spent three months at an ICE facility in Texas before he was given bond and allowed to return to Maine while his immigration case continued.

The same trooper stopped a vehicle in August because its fog lights were on, requested identification from everyone inside and waited more than an hour for a Border Patrol agent to arrive, according to video from his body camera.

Three men from Ecuador arrested during the stop were later ordered to be released by a U.S. District Court judge, who found they had been unlawfully denied bond hearings by immigration officials.

Anahita Sotoohi, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine who has been requesting similar records from state police, said the number of calls to immigration authorities was only a “small part of the picture,” and that the details of the stops matter.

“I think for full context, for example, you would also want to know things like, how often has Maine State Police pulled over anyone for having a fog light on when conditions are clear, right, as they did in one traffic stop,” Sotoohi said. “Of the times that they did that, how many of those drivers were white, or not white?”

Staff Writer Morgan Womack contributed to this story.