A St. Louis police officer mistakenly called an immigration advocacy hotline to report an arrest 11%
By Lacretia Wimbley0%
4/16/2026, 10:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 14 faulty reasoning types, including Politically Left Leaning Bias, Pessimism Bias, and Framing Effect, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 11.6% saturation with 109 hits. Analysis detected 678 faulty-reasoning hits from 943 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 27.5% and a BS Rank of 11% (15,123 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 89.90% of the article peer group.
A St.
Louis police officer mistakenly called an immigration advocacy hotline earlier this week while attempting to reach U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to report that he had arrested someone.
The officer called the St.
Louis Rapid Response Hotline, which is run by the Ashrei Foundation.
The group provides support for immigrant families and fosters collaboration between local nonprofits to help end poverty and homelessness in the St.
Louis region.
Individuals can call the hotline for help locating loved ones detained by ICE, navigating jail apps to talk to them, and learning about legal options.
Sara Ruiz, executive director of the Ashrei Foundation, said the St.
Louis Metropolitan Police officer called the hotline just after 9 a.m.
Monday and identified himself as a city police officer, but did not share his name or badge number.
Ruiz said the caller ID revealed his name.
St.
Louis Public Radio confirmed the officer works at the SLMPD.
Ruiz said during the two-minute call, the officer stated he had an arrestee and wanted to know if this was the right phone line to report the person to ICE.
“Our volunteer said ‘no’ and explained what we do,” Ruiz said.
“(The officer) replied along the lines of ‘thanks for your work’ and the call ended.
So there was no additional opportunity to get more info.
No names were mentioned nor did he reveal any information about the arrest or what led him to make this call.”
SLMPD later confirmed the person was arrested on felony charges, but further details about the arrest have not yet been made available.
Advocates said the officer’s error validates immigrants’ concerns about local police acting as independent ICE agents, regardless of whether or not law enforcement have 287(g) agreements with federal departments.
Such agreements are contracts that deputize some federal immigration enforcement tasks to local law enforcement.
“The reality is that across Missouri, and specifically in the St.
Louis region, police departments are cooperating with ICE without the 287(g) agreement,” said Alicia Hernandez, Advocacy Director at the Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project.
“This mistaken call really opens the door to all of the concerns that we have.
One of the realities of police cooperating with ICE is that it results in racial profiling.”
More than 60 individual 287(g) agreements have been signed in Missouri, including in St.
Charles County, which passed legislation last month.
City sending ‘misleading’ messages about ICE relationship
Ruiz said the city’s stance regarding its cooperation with ICE has been confusing amid increasing ICE detainments regionally and nationwide.
She noted a letter shared in March with local immigration groups by St.
Louis Mayor Cara Spencer that stated:
“The city is not working with ICE.
Legally, ICE can operate in our city as a federal agency, but our own departments and agencies are not working with them.
This means we are not meeting with them, we are not giving them the names of people suspected of having unverifiable immigration status, and we are not providing them with information about communities or residents.”
Spencer’s statement went on to say that police will “call ICE if they arrest someone and that individual has an unconfirmed immigration status.
The St.
Louis Metropolitan Police Department will not call ICE for non-violent offenses like traffic violations.”
Ruiz said the city should reassess where it stands and how far it is willing to go to protect residents.
She said she’s asked for clarity about the city’s practices and procedures in response to Spencer’s letter, but received little response.
“Presenting the city as a place where immigrants are safe and where local law enforcement is not in any way participating in immigration enforcement is dishonest and it's misleading,” Ruiz said.
Jake’s Law
A Missouri statute called Jake’s Law requires police departments to check for outstanding warrants for misdemeanors and felonies through the Missouri Uniform Law Enforcement System and the National Crime Information Center before transferring or releasing individuals from custody.
The SLMPD said in an emailed statement in February that it does not assist with immigration enforcement.
SLMPD Sgt.
Sean Mazzola said in an emailed statement Wednesday that in addition to following Jake’s Law, the department’s policy is “to contact ICE when a person is arrested on a criminal charge” if that person is without legal status.
“We will also contact ICE if we receive a National Crime Information Center (NCIC) response while running a person's name through a law enforcement database and it comes back with an ICE detainer, requiring officers to hold the person until a confirmation is received from ICE,” Mazzola said.
Experts have noted that varying versions of 287(g) agreements give police and jail officials the right to ask about immigration status during traffic stops and to check detainee information against national immigration databases.
But for those without 287(g) agreements in Missouri, Ruiz said it’s puzzling why police departments sometimes rely on the language in Jake’s Law to validate contacting ICE during traffic stops or following arrests.
She noted that the law itself does not explicitly mention checking a person’s immigration status.
“We're continuing to see an increase in a myriad of other tools that local law enforcement can use to funnel people into this detention and deportation machine, and you don't need a 287(g) for that,” Ruiz said.
A traffic stop recently landed a St.
Louis County man — and former DACA recipient — in a rural jail in O'Fallon, Missouri.
And earlier this month, officers from the Hillsdale Police Department who have a 287(g) agreement showed up at Ritenour Middle School looking for three students.
Analysis
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