This story was originally produced by the Keene Sentinel. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
Of the 12 immigration arrests Troy Police Chief David Ellis says his department has made since September, two were in Keene.
Ellis and Keene’s police chief said they believe Troy police had authority to make these arrests in the city. The reasons they cited differ.
Keene Police Chief Steven Stewart said he believed Troy police were acting on federal authority, which supersedes local jurisdictions. Ellis said he feels a mutual aid agreement between the municipalities authorizes him to make arrests in the city. Legal experts who spoke to The Sentinel paint a still more complicated picture.
Both of the November arrests took place outside the Cheshire County courthouse, where Ellis said he knew people would be coming out of the district court.
He said he had warrants from ICE to make those arrests, unlike the traffic-stops-turned-detentions that make up the majority of the arrests his department has made for the federal agency.
Under an agreement the department signed with ICE in March, Ellis and two other Troy officers were trained and authorized by the federal agency to act on its behalf in a limited capacity with oversight from the ICE office in Manchester.
The agreement, however, leaves unclear whether that authority is any good outside of Troy.
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Authority
Police departments typically have authority only in their own municipalities. However, Keene and Troy are both part of a county-wide mutual aid agreement.
That agreement, provided to The Sentinel by Keene police, states departments’ authority outside their own towns is extended only under specific circumstances: if they are asked for help, if they believe another officer is in danger, if an officer is hired for a paid detail by another town, or if they witness a crime while in another town.
Most immigration violations are civil offenses.
The agreement also specifies that the town in which an offense occurred takes the lead in following up with any charges.
Ron Abramson, a Shaheen and Gordon attorney and expert on immigration, said that in New Hampshire, arrests by one police department in another department’s town are typically governed by rules set forth in N.H. RSA 105:13.
Under that law, Troy police wouldn’t have authority to make arrests in Keene unless there was a written mutual aid agreement that allowed it, Keene requested assistance, or the arrest fell within another exception, like disasters or emergencies that cross municipal lines.
When RSA 105:13 is violated in criminal cases, it can lead to suppression of evidence or case dismissal, Abramson said. In the context of removal proceedings, however, he said it’s far less clear what the ramifications might be.
During a phone interview with The Sentinel on Monday, Stewart said he wasn’t sure if Ellis had given Keene police a heads up before making the arrests, but said he thought of the issue similarly to the sheriff’s office or N.H. State Police making arrests.
As long as Troy police are in uniform and at the courthouse, as opposed to working in plainclothes or going into someone’s home, he said he doesn’t think it’s “a huge issue.”
Part of a bigger trend
Troy signed its memorandum of understanding with ICE about a month after Gov. Kelly Ayotte encouraged New Hampshire law enforcement agencies to do so.
The law that allows for these partnerships has existed since 1996, but President Donald Trump, who promised “mass deportations” while on the campaign trail, pushed for the program’s expansion.
As of December 2024, ICE had 135 agreements with state and local agencies, according to the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit advocacy organization founded by the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
As of Dec. 5, 2025, ICE had 1,200 of these agreements. Troy’s is the only one in Cheshire County.
Enrique Mesa, an immigration attorney based in Manchester, said he doesn’t believe 287(g), the partnership program through which police like Troy’s are trained to do work for ICE, has the power to extend a police department’s normal jurisdiction.
Mesa said Troy police shouldn’t have authority to arrest within Keene without a recognized exception, like if they pursued someone into the city.
“They are still bound by the same jurisdictional rules as every other department in the state,” he wrote in an email. “So if Troy officers made immigration arrests in Keene without the proper legal safeguards, they would be acting outside their authority.”
Mesa said he feels that “unfortunately tracks with what we are seeing nationwide: minimal oversight and significant overreach.”
As of Nov. 16, there were more than 65,000 people in immigration custody, the majority arrested by ICE, according to data compiled by TRAC Immigration. That’s up about 60 percent from January.
Some arrests are linked to criminal charges or immigration violations, but some detained have not been charged with anything.
Ellis told The Sentinel all the arrests done in Troy started as traffic stops for speeding or other violations.
During those stops, Ellis said Troy police call ICE if someone shows up in the federal agency’s database as illegally in the country. They also call, he said, if the person doesn’t show up in the database at all.
Detention reports provided by Ellis show some people arrested had outstanding warrants for removal, had previously been removed from the U.S., had allegedly committed a crime, or had allegedly overstayed a visa.
At least one, however, just didn’t show up in the database.
Courthouse arrests
The detention reports show the two arrests Ellis made outside the Cheshire County courthouse were prompted by warrants from ICE for people who were expected to be at the district court.
The first, on Nov. 6, started with a call from David Ciulla at the Manchester ICE office. He asked Troy police to go to Keene’s district court that morning and detain Francisco Guasco Cela, a Milford, Mass., resident who was expected to be there for a DUI arraignment.
Ellis and another Troy officer followed Cela into the court, the report of the encounter says, then waited outside of the building until he came out.
The Troy police officers introduced themselves using Google Translate and put Cela in a cruiser. From there, he was taken to the Troy police station and then to Manchester.
In the second incident, Ellis wrote in a detention report that he received a warrant for arrest from ICE for Fabiana Goncalves Da Cunha, whom he found would be at the district court in Keene on Nov. 13.
That report doesn’t say why Da Cunha, a resident of Keene, was at court.
Once again, Ellis reported he went into the courthouse to confirm she was there, then waited outside.
Through a court interpreter he asked to help, Ellis explained the warrant to the woman, he wrote.
He let Da Cunha call her husband and waited a while for him to come see her before taking her into custody, the report says.
“I did not handcuff FABIANA because she was being very cooperative, I let her keep her purse and cell phone,” Ellis wrote.
He and another officer then took Da Cunha to Manchester.
Cheshire County Sheriff Eli Rivera, whose agency provides security at the courthouse, told The Sentinel last week he worries arrests like those Troy police made outside the courthouse may lead some immigrants to avoid showing up to court.
Rivera said such police activity may cause people to fear going to their court hearings.
Rivera didn’t respond Monday to a request for comment about whether he believes Troy police have authority to make arrests in Keene.
