GUILDERLAND — Two similar cases in Guilderland — one this week and one from last September — are being treated very differently by the federal government.

Two women were arrested by Guilderland Police on Friday for performing massage without a license. Liu Aping, 47, and Guiping Zhang, 52, both of Flushing, New York, were each charged with unauthorized practice of a licensed profession, a felony. They worked at the Chinese Wellness Center at 1871 Western Ave. in Guilderland.

One of the two women, Aping, was handed over to the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, Guilderland Police said.

ICE spokesman Khaalid Walls told The Enterprise that Aping was arrested by ICE for immigration violations and is currently in deportation proceedings.

In the case dating from September 2016, three women were arrested in connection with massages performed without proper licensing, at a different massage parlor, A&B Western Spa at 2020 Western Ave. At the time, Walls told The Enterprise that the people involved did not meet the agency’s criteria for taking any further action, and that the agency’s policy, to best use its limited resources, was to prioritize cases involving matters of “national security, border security, and public safety.”

The policy has changed, Walls wrote in an email this week.

“ICE continues to focus its enforcement resources on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security,” he wrote. “However, as ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan has made clear, ICE does not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States.”

Soon after Donald Trump took office, he appointed Homan as acting director of ICE. Homan the year before had won an award for his work deporting illegal immigrants; in May, Homan announced that ICE arrested 41,319 people, at a rate of 400 people per day, between Inauguration Day, Jan. 22, and the end of April, a 38 percent increase from the same time frame in 2016.

The current investigation into the licensing was conducted by the police with the New York State Education Department Division of Licensing Services and ICE, resulting in the arrests.

Zhang was released on bail and was due in Guilderland Town Court on Aug. 31.

Aping was due in court on Aug. 31 as well, but was turned over to ICE.

When asked this week about the disposition in Guilderland Town Court of the three earlier cases from a year ago, Clerk to the Justices Jennifer Stephens replied in an email, “Please be advised that there is no record.”

Heather Orth, spokeswoman for the Albany County District Attorney’s Office, said this week that charges against the two employees in the earlier case — Hsi Hua Ho and Yani Du — were “dismissed in the interest of justice,” while the case against the business owner, Yanyun Xie, was adjourned in contemplation of dismissal, which means that, if Xie isn’t arrested again, the charges against her are dismissed.

A 2015 charge in Colonie Town Court against Xie for unauthorized practice, when she was a worker at a spa in Colonie, was dropped “in the interest of justice,” then-spokeswoman Cecilia Walsh of the Albany County District Attorney’s Office told The Enterprise last year. Xie’s 2015 arrest in Colonie was one of a number of arrests by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office of masseuses from several spas on charges of unauthorized practice that had been “dismissed in the interest of justice” Walsh said last year, adding that the records in that case had been sealed.

Walsh said at the time that she could not discuss that case specifically, but referred The Enterprise to a legal definition of “motion to dismiss,” which can be brought when there is some “compelling factor, consideration or circumstance clearly demonstrating that conviction or prosecution … would constitute or result in injustice.”

A press release issued by the sheriff’s office at the time of the Colonie arrests quoted Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple as saying that the reason for starting the investigation into the spas was to identify victims of human trafficking. He added, in the release, that, although all of the suspects had been charged, if they were found to be victims, the charges would be dropped.

Apple went on to say, in the release, that his office planned to offer counseling to any victims being exploited as sex workers.

“Victims in these cases are typically uncooperative,” Apple was quoted as saying, “but we hope they can be rescued and that’s our goal.” He added that other agencies across the state and nation “should be doing more to help these victims.”

No sex charges

Guilderland’s deputy chief of police, Curtis Cox, said Tuesday that the police had received complaints from the public about “illegal services being performed at the Chinese Wellness Center.”

Cox said that the complaints were from people who believed that sexual services were being performed. Citizens observed that the clientele was mostly male or that the business seemed to be open beyond its advertised hours, Cox said.

To make arrests on sex-related charges such as prostitution, Cox said, police would need to catch people in the act or “have a written complaint that this had happened.”

“This particular arrest was based on a check of whether there was proper licensing, and apparently there was not, because that’s what they were arrested for,” Cox said.

A press release from the police about the arrests concluded, “Anyone patronizing any type of massage facility should be aware that legitimate massage parlors are required to prominently display the license of each person performing any type of massage therapy.”

Cox said that with licenses come rules and regulations: “They can’t unclothe parts of the body that aren’t being massaged at the time; they cannot unclothe any of the private parts of the body, or engage in any sexual activity,” he said. “And we did receive complaints that it was suspected that these types of situations were occurring there,” he continued, referring to the recent arrests at the Chinese Wellness Center.

“Certainly people that seek out a massage need to make sure that it is a licensed facility — I should say a legitimate licensed facility — and that they’re following the rules,” Cox concluded.

The Chinese Wellness Center remains open. A cosmetology license granted to Jiang Yan Yan of Queens hangs on the wall; that license is listed on the website of the Department of State as being current through 2020.

In the September 2016 case, two of the three women arrested — Du, 29, and Ho, 45 — were charged not only with unauthorized practice but also with endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor, because the two young children of the third woman — Xie, 34 — who owned the business, were regularly bused to A&B Western Spa, after school and cared for their by their mother or her two employees.

None of the three defendants in that earlier case were listed on the State Education Department website as being licensed in massage therapy, although the business owner did, according to the Department of State website, have an active license to operate an appearance-enhancement business.

At the time of the earlier arrests, Cox told The Enterprise that the charges were strictly for operating without a license, and not for any type of sexual contact with customers.

This week, Cox said that, in the earlier case, too, there had been complaints from citizens about possible illegal sexual services being performed at A&B Western Spa.

Corrected on Aug. 28, 2017: In referring to last year’s arrests, we originally wrote that the three defendants were not listed as licensed by the Department of State when actually it is the Department of Education that is responsible for licensing massage; they were not listed on the education-department site.

Updated on Aug. 30, 3017: Information was added from Khaalid Walls, Heather Orth, and Curtis Cox. Also, a description of the current license at the Chinese Wellness Center was added.