GUILDERLAND — Within a month, two Latin American men have been stopped by Guilderland Police, in unrelated incidents, and turned over to federal officials.

Chief Carol Lawlor said that the Guilderland Police department policy is to not ask people who have done nothing wrong about their immigration status. However, she also said, if police officers think the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, should be advised about someone in police custody, “It’s in their discretion.”

Diego Efrain Ceto de Leon, 24, a native of Guatemala, was in a car with others who, like himself, were not born in the United States when Guilderland Police on Sept. 16 stopped the car for speeding, Lawlor said.

Guilderland Police then turned Ceto de Leon over to federal immigration officials so that they could further examine his documentation, said both Federal Defender Gene Primomo and Assistant United States Attorney Richard Southwick this week.

Ceto de Leon produced identification documents issued by a foreign government, Southwick said.

Lawlor said Ceto de Leon and others in the car with him had documents only in Spanish, and Ceto de Leon told Guilderland Police that he was in the country illegally.

Guilderland Police contacted New York enforcement and removal authorities, said Primomo, to examine the documents.

Lawlor said this week of her officers, in general, “They’re looking at papers and they don’t know what they’re looking at, they’re going to contact ICE.”

Immigration officials would be better equipped than local police, she said, to know if the people stopped were wanted on, for instance, federal charges.

“Sometimes you look at the papers and they’re not in a language you speak, and you have no idea what you’re looking at, so that’s when they would call ICE,” Lawlor said.

Immigration officials interviewed Ceto de Leon “to determine alienage and removability,” according to court documents, and he was arrested “after he was determined to be present in the United States without admission or parole from an immigration officer.”

Ceto de Leon was taken to the ICE office in Albany, “where he had his fingerprints entered in the Department of Homeland Security’s IDENT fingerprint database,” court documents say. Through fingerprint comparison, ICE determined he was an alien who had been deported before, on July 23, 2014 at Weslaco, Texas.

Ceto de Leon told ICE officials that he re-entered the United States by bus on Nov. 28, 2014. On Oct. 13, he had pleaded guilty in federal court to illegally re-entering the United States and was sentenced to time served, and placed in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security for deportation.

Second case

A separate and unrelated ICE arrest in Guilderland — again of someone who had illegally re-entered the country — was announced by the United States Attorney’s Office on Wednesday.

Dario Sanchez-Rosas, 55, of Yonkers, pleaded guilty on Oct. 18 in federal court to illegally re-entering the United States, Southwick said.

Sanchez-Rosas, who is from Mexico, was deported back to Mexico three times in 2001. On Aug. 24, 2017, he was arrested by ICE in Guilderland.

Southwick said that Sanchez-Rosa was picked up by ICE following an appearance in a local court on an unrelated criminal charge, and that he had false identification.

As with Ceto de Leon, a fingerprint check revealed Sanchez-Rosas’s prior immigration history.

As a result of his conviction, Sanchez-Rosas faces up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 when he is sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Norman A. Mordue on Jan. 18, 2018, Southwick said.

Deputy chief of the Guilderland Police, Curtis Cox, could not find any record of an incident involving Sanchez-Rosas on Aug. 24, 2017, and said that he may have been picked up by sheriff’s deputies or another agency.

The cases involving both Ceto de Leon and Sanchez-Rosas were prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward P. Grogan.

Melanie Trimble, chapter director of the Capital Region chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said, before she or The Enterprise knew that the men found in Guilderland were in the country illegally, that police should not involve ICE in everyday law-enforcement activity.

“Keeping police out of the business of immigration enforcement improves public safety, protect immigrants, and supports trust between communities and police,” Trimble said.