The House Redrafted the PROTECT Act. How is the new bill different?

On Friday, the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee reported out a redraft of the PROTECT Act, the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus’s bill to strengthen protections for immigrant communities in Mass.

Original: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5158 

Redraft: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5293 

The bill is a mashup of the PROTECT Act and Healey’s bill. For example, it takes language around protecting courthouses from Healey’s bill, not the PROTECT Act  (see comparison chart here).

PROTECT 2.0 eliminates the following provisions of PROTECT 1.0: 

  • The section requiring disclosure of ICE or CBP employment in the POST certification process 
  • Several of the protections for individuals in ICE detention
    • The guarantee of 1 free telephone call within the first 2 hours of ICE detention 
    • The requirement that detention facilities maintain a “secure electronic locator system” for detained individuals, replacing it with a less specific requirement for record-keeping. 
    • The guarantee that detained individuals will be provided access to legal services organizations 
    • The requirement that a public hotline enabling people to identify individuals in custody have hours “sufficient to provide timely location confirmation” 
  • Some of the language banning communication between state and local law enforcement and ICE:
    • The ban on communication with ICE, as opposed to simply “initiation” of contact.
    • The ban on “ facilitat[ing] a transfer timed to enable a federal civil immigration enforcement action”  
    • (BUT the language does remove the conditional descriptor of “primary” in its ban on the “use state or local resources for the purpose of facilitating a federal civil immigration enforcement action”) 
  • The expansion of agencies able to certify individuals for U and T visas to include the executive office of the trial court and the juvenile court department; the department of children and families; the executive office of labor and workforce development and any agency within the secretariat with authority over wage and hour, workplace safety, unemployment insurance or labor standards; the Massachusetts commission against discrimination; and any other state or local agency designated by regulation of the secretary of public safety and security in consultation with the attorney general.

PROTECT 2.0 adds the following provisions: 

  • A requirement that employers provide notice to employees within 48 hours of notice of an upcoming ICE workplace raid (“I9 inspection”) 
  • Inclusion of “the likelihood of imminent deportation” to the factors considered at a bail hearing, which could lead to immigration status being treated as an indicator flight risk in and of itself and could exacerbate racial disparities in bail hearing outcomes 
  • Directive to Governor Maura Healey’s administration to create rules around locations where ICE agents would be prohibited and multilingual guidelines for state agencies about how to comply (A watered down version of Healey’s “sensitive locations” language) 

Neither PROTECT 1.0 nor PROTECT 2.0 did the following: 

  • Ban future 287(g) agreements between sheriffs and ICE. More than sixty percent of 287(g) agreements around the country are signed by sheriffs. 
  • Provide a clean ban on 287(g) agreements, as opposed to one with a series of conditions. The conditions in the bill are designed to never be met, but other states have done clean bans.
  • Terminate the one existing 287(g) agreement in the state, i.e., the DOC contract, of which Governor Maura Healey has been a staunch defender.
  • End ICE detention in Massachusetts (e.g., “shutting down Plymouth detention center”) 

Find some more detailed textual analysis here.