ImmigrationMore law enforcement agencies refuse to hold undocumented inmates for ICE
Recent court rulings have emboldened roughly 225 law enforcement agencies across the country to refuse requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE) officials to hold undocumented inmates past their release dates so federal authorities can have time to deport them. Until recently, inmates suspected of being in the country illegally were held for an additional forty-eight hours until ICE agents arrived. Some municipalities began limiting the number of holds a few years ago, but several counties and cities have begun to ignore the requests all together after recent court rulings confirmed that the immigration holds are not mandatory.
Recent court rulings have emboldened roughly 225 law enforcement agencies across the country to refuse requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to hold undocumented inmates past their release dates so federal authorities can have time to deport them.
Until recently, inmates suspected of being in the country illegally were held for an additional forty-eight hours until ICE agents arrived. Some municipalities began limiting the number of holds a few years ago, but several counties and cities have begun to ignore the requests all together after recent court rulings confirmed that the immigration holds are not mandatory. “I think there’s momentum,” said Kate Desormeau, an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney who ligated immigration hold cases. “The more localities recognize that they don’t have to do this — and that it doesn’t make sense for them to do this — makes it easier for other localities sitting on the sidelines to say they’re going to stop treating ICE detainers like warrants.”
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania ruled in March that states and local law enforcement agencies were not obligated to comply with immigration hold requests because such requests did not amount to the probable cause required by the Constitution to keep individuals in jail. Last Monday, another federal judge in Chicago affirmed that local law enforcement agencies should not consider the ICE requests mandatory.
The Los Angeles Times reports that in addition to 225 law enforcement agencies who have decided to refuse hold requests from ICE, twenty-five agencies have placed limits on the number of immigration holds they will honor. A California state law implemented in January — the Trust Act — rules that law enforcement agencies should not agree to hold requests unless the inmate is charged or convicted with a serious offense. Capital reports that New York City lawmakers are reviewing a bill to stop or limit requests for immigration holds. No law enforcement agency in Texas has stopped honoring hold requests, and in Arizona, only South Tucson is declining to grant holds. Colorado has passed a law ordering all state agencies to ignore immigration holds, while all county jails in New Mexico are no longer accepting hold requests.
Grace Philips, general counsel for the New Mexico Association of Counties, said some county officials stopped honoring hold requests because they feared litigation, while others considered hold requests to be a burden to their already overcrowded jails, especially since DHS failed to reimburse them for housing the inmates during holding periods.
Some officials, however, disagree with the new policy. Commissioner Wayne A. Johnson of Bernalillo County, which includes Albuquerque, said the new policy would become a public safety issue, especially with the recent influx of Central American immigrants coming through the U.S.-Mexico border. “Not everyone crossing the border is here just looking for a better life for their family. We don’t know who else is coming across the border,” Johnson said. Bernalillo County Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins, who fought to reject the ICE hold requests said releasing undocumented inmates upon their release dates pose no threat to society. “It’s important to understand that every single individual who was subject to an ICE hold has been determined by the court to be eligible for release. They were not a threat to society,” she said. ICE Spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa has defended the agency’s objectives regarding hold requests and said ICE would work with local law enforcement “to enforce its priorities through the identification and removal of convicted criminals and other public safety threats.”
While the new law in New Mexico has sparked controversy, Bernalillo County Attorney Randy Autio said it had to be followed across the state. “There is a natural tendency for folks to say, ‘Wait a minute. If these are criminals, why would you not cooperate with ICE?’” Autio said. “We had to explain that it is simply that you cannot deprive someone of their constitutional rights for the convenience of another agency.”
