DEMAND 3

TOWARDS IMMIGRANT JUSTICE

Sheriffs Should End All Voluntary Cooperation with Any and All Immigration Enforcement

The Issue

Sheriffs are not required to enforce federal immigration laws. Despite this, many of them maintain voluntary agreements or contracts within immigration enforcement, often unlawfully detaining people or tipping off immigration enforcement about a person’s release. 

When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enters into a 287(g) agreement with a sheriff's office, that office is deputized to perform certain functions of federal immigration agents. Deputies can interview individuals to find out their immigration status, issue immigration detainers, issue a notice to appear in immigration court, transfer noncitizens to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, and perform other actions usually reserved for ICE agents.

ICE detainers or “immigration holds” are requests from ICE to sheriffs or local jail administrators to continue holding people for 48 hours after their scheduled release date. Sheriffs do not have to honor these detainers and can release the person instead. Courts have found that many detainers do not include any legal justification for arresting or detaining the person, and as a result, the requested continued detention would be unlawful.

Some sheriffs rent beds to ICE under Intergovernmental Service Agreements (IGSAs). A significant number of ICE’s detained population is held pursuant to IGSAs between ICE and local jail administrators, usually sheriffs, to keep individuals detained in jail pending civil deportation proceedings. These agreements award up to $162 a day for every person held.


Why It Matters

Aggressive immigration enforcement causes real harm in local communities. First, it leads to racist policing practices, as deputies may engage in racial profiling or targeted policing based on ethnicity or national origin. For example, during a raid of a rural Pennsylvania company in 2018, officers “lined up Latinos for questioning and asked white employees to lead them to more Latino workers.” ICE also has a history of getting citizenships wrong. An NPR analysis found that hundreds of U.S. citizens have been wrongfully held in jails and ICE detention centers on federal immigration detainers. People in deportation proceedings are not entitled to a court-appointed lawyer, which makes proving their right to be in the country much more difficult.

It also makes people who are witnesses or victims of crime less likely to come forward. When people know that contact with local law enforcement could lead to ICE involvement, they simply will not report crimes. The person who caused harm will be able to continue to do so. Human traffickers, for example, use the fear of law enforcement to reinforce and strengthen their coercion and control over their victims.

Honoring ICE detainers can dramatically increase jail populations because of the trickle-down effects: individuals with detainers often receive higher bonds or no bond at all, increasing their rate of being held for their entire pretrial period. Studies show that individuals with immigration detainers spent additional weeks in jail pretrial.

Sheriffs who contract with neighboring counties and the federal government to house other individuals from places with full jails will likely end up overcrowding their own jail. As a recent Vera Report revealed, many sheriffs rent out jail bed space to neighboring counties for a per diem, ostensibly for a profit. But that simply leads to more crowding in their own jails, and at a time when staffing is short, less safety and care for those housed in them.


What’s Possible

Sheriffs have discretion and power. They can choose to oppose policies that make communities less safe. Taking on the federal government’s job will drain resources from the office and fill up the jail with people who do not pose any threat to community safety. Sheriffs across the country that have taken a stand against being forced to perform federal immigration enforcement, including Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller, among others.


How We Get There

Sheriffs should immediately take action to end cooperation with ICE and stop directing their limited resources to federal immigration enforcement. They take the following actions: 

  • Terminate any existing agreements with ICE, including 287(g) agreements and most bed rental programs, known as Intergovernmental Service Agreements (IGSAs). 

  • Refuse to hold noncitizens longer in order for ICE to take custody. 

  • Do not rent beds to the federal government or neighboring counties.

  • Prohibit any information and record sharing with ICE, including personal information about people in custody and release dates, and refuse ICE access to internal databases. 

  • Prohibit deputies and jail staff from asking individuals about their citizenship or immigration status, and remove citizenship status and place-of-birth questions from intake and booking forms. 

  • Refuse ICE access to the jail without a judicial warrant. 

  • Advise noncitizens of their rights and provide a copy of all relevant documents, such as ICE detainer requests. 

  • Do not use ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers as interpreters.

  • Encourage state sheriffs’ associations to oppose federal immigration enforcement actions, such as ICE raids and arrests, and to oppose anti-immigrant state legislation. 

  • Implement policies to reduce arrests so that fewer people are brought to jails where their biometric data is collected and shared with immigration enforcement.


Example Policy

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