Blakeman's ICE policy conflicts with pursuit of justice in some Nassau criminal cases

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and District Attorney Anne Donnelly are at odds over a policy where federal agents are deporting immigrants before they’re punished for committing local crimes.

Nassau's probation department — which interviews criminal defendants and makes sentencing recommendations to judges — is alerting federal agents to arrest immigrants at court-ordered appearances before they serve any prison time. The Mineola office has become a vanishing point for criminal defendants, including two men convicted of homicide and rape, angering victims’ families who say they want justice, prosecutors say. 

The practice has not only impacted those set to be sentenced, but also those serving probation, frustrating prosecutors and defense attorneys alike. They told Newsday the policy prioritizes President Donald Trump's immigration policies over local punishment or reform. 

Prosecutors in Queens and Suffolk say they don't have the same coordination with federal officials, as defendants are handed lengthy prison sentences before facing deportation. 

"Probation is not law enforcement," defense lawyer Karen Johnston said, adding at least three of her clients were arrested during probation appointments. "This isn't something in probation's duties to tip off ICE to somebody who they feel doesn't have proper documentation."

Over a dozen deportations

Scott Banks, head of the Legal Aid Society of Nassau County, said more than a dozen of his organization’s clients were deported after being arrested at the probation building next to the courthouse in Mineola.

Probation officers serve a crucial role in the criminal justice system, interviewing defendants about their level of remorse, substance abuse and family history in order to make sentencing recommendations to the judge. Probation also supervises people who have served their prison sentences or were offered mental health or drug and alcohol treatment programs as rehabilitation. Officers have a granular knowledge of people going through the court process and, after their defense lawyers, work as closely with them as anyone else in the system.

The coordination between Nassau's probation department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement forces criminal defendants to choose between violating court orders or abiding by them and being removed from the country, Banks said.

On Jan. 15, for instance, Alex Morales Domínguez, 33, pleaded guilty to third-degree rape after admitting to having sex with a 16-year-old Hicksville girl he met at a gym.

The Honduran immigrant faced 6 months in jail under a plea agreement approved by Supreme Court Justice Meryl J. Berkowitz. Donnelly’s office recommended 2 years behind bars.

Domínguez missed his sentencing hearing before Supreme Court Justice Teresa Corrigan in Nassau County Court because he was arrested by ICE at the probation office and is being held in Camp East Montana, a federal detention site in El Paso, Texas.

Prosecutors with the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office have since obtained a court order for his return.

"We are frustrated that Alex Morales Dominguez is not currently serving jail time after pleading guilty last October to the rape of a teenager, and as a result, may avoid being rightfully designated as a sex offender for his crime," Donnelly spokeswoman Nicole Turso said in an emailed statement. "Our goal remains ensuring that this defendant is punished for his unlawful actions and that his victim knows justice. We are considering our options with cooperation from the court to see that this defendant is ultimately sentenced."

The prosecutor’s office said it contacted ICE ahead of Domínguez's Jan. 15 sentencing and were told he would not be brought back to Long Island because it conflicted with an immigration court date on Jan. 23.

The district attorney’s office said they are hoping he is returned by his rescheduled sentencing date on Feb. 18, but the future of his case remains unclear.

Blakeman previously said there is no coordination between the probation department and ICE. But asked repeatedly by Newsday about mounting evidence to the contrary, he said in a statement that these decisions are "confidential."

"The Nassau County Probation Department, as part of their responsibility to keep Nassau County safe, makes value judgments on a case-by-case basis based on risk to the community. These deliberations are confidential and are made in the best interest of public safety," Blakeman wrote.

Blakeman, a Republican running for governor, partnered Nassau's police and sheriff's departments with ICE last year, in support of Trump's mass deportation of immigrants without valid documentation. 

He disagreed with Donnelly that Domínguez should serve his time in New York.

"I completely understand the rationale of the District Attorney in wanting the sentence to be served. An illegal migrant who pleaded guilty to rape was released by a Nassau County judge with a commitment to only incarcerate the defendant for 6 months," Blakeman told Newsday in an earlier statement. "ICE then picked the convicted rapist up for deportation hearings. As a result, Nassau taxpayers would have to bear the burden of incarcerating an illegal migrant in Nassau County ... only to be released four months later."

ICE did not respond to an inquiry on the relationship between the agency and Nassau's probation department. The probation department referred Newsday questions to Blakeman’s spokesman. A spokesman for the New York court system referred questions back to local officials.

Evading a 12-year sentence

The Domínguez case is not unique.

Earlier this month, Newsday reported a Salvadoran man had evaded a 12-year prison sentence for aggravated vehicular homicide when he was arrested at the probation department during his presentence interview, then deported.

Wilfredo Blanco Molina, 41, now lives with his family in his native country after ICE agents nabbed him at the Mineola office, according to his lawyers.

Nassau County prosecutors filed a request to ICE to return Molina for sentencing, but it was ignored.

Defense attorney Christopher Graziano, who heads the Criminal Courts Bar Association of Nassau County, which represented both Molina and Domínguez, said the probation department — housed in a long, squat two-story building next to the courthouse parking lot — works with ICE to arrest and deport migrants at their scheduled appointments.

Johnston said one of her clients who was brought to the United States as a child was protected against deportation under a federal law referred to as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

This client agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a lighter punishment, which the judge agreed to give him, she said.

"Probation is given to a client because the court deems that the client can and should be rehabilitated," Johnston told Newsday. "I think probation is to help them with issues, so that they become a more productive member of society. They're not law enforcement, yet they seem to be working with ICE and notifying them of clients who [Nassau probation] has determined, based on what, I'm not sure, that the clients don't have proper documentation."

Joseph Carbone Jr., another Nassau County defense attorney, said the new arrangement between the probation department and ICE creates a disincentive for migrants to follow the rules.

"Honestly, once you're arrested, if you're an undocumented individual, what's the point of coming to court if you're going to just get deported?" he said. "These are guys who are working, they’ve lived [in the United States] for years, they’re nonviolent, low-level misdemeanor criminal charges, and they get deported. I mean, to me, that seems a little extreme for what they were charged with. They were compliant, they came back to court, they dealt with their cases. They didn't abscond and they still get deported."

Banks, with the Legal Aid Society, said the practice puts his office in the difficult position of encouraging clients to comply with the local criminal justice system, knowing that federal agents could be at appointments to arrest them.

"We can't tell them not to go. But now we are actually being complicit in what probation is doing, and it really undermines the attorney-client relationship, and frankly, the trust that we can have with our clients," Banks said.

The probation department is undermining the court system as plea agreements between prosecutors and defense attorneys are broken, and the sentences the judges hand down are not the punishments that are actually meted out, he said.

"Courts are not even given an opportunity to render judgment," Banks said. "They’re just grabbing up whoever they can."