San Juan County cannot honor ‘ICE detainers’
Settlement prohibits jail from holding inmates based only on immigration status
A federal judge in Albuquerque has approved a settlement that prohibits the San Juan County jail from holding inmates past their release date at the request of federal agents, based only on their immigration status — an order that advocates say is a direct rebuke of the Trump administration.
U.S. District Court Judge William P. Johnson’s recent approval of the deal comes as the Trump administration has blasted local jurisdictions across the U.S. that won’t turn over undocumented immigrants to federal agents. On Monday, the administration began publishing a weekly report of law enforcement agencies that have refused to detain immigrants who are set for release so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement can have more time to investigate their residency status. The list says no county in New Mexico will honor an ICE detainer request.
“This is an example of a county taking appropriate action, because the law prohibits detention by a county jail solely based on an ICE detainer,” said John Bienvenu, a Santa Fe lawyer for the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit against ICE and San Juan County. “And what this current [presidential] administration is asking counties to do is violate the law.”
As part of the settlement, county jail officials can only hand over an inmate to ICE if federal agents have an arrest warrant signed by a judge.
San Juan County also has agreed to pay $2,000 to each person who files a qualifying claim, $25,000 to a Farmington woman who is the lead plaintiff in the class-action case, $15,000 to Somos Un Pueblo Unido and another $300,000 in attorney’s fees.
Johnson granted preliminary approval Friday to the settlement, which stems from a lawsuit filed in November 2014 by Somos, a Santa Fe-based immigrant advocacy group, and Susana Palacios-Valencia of Farmington. She claims in the suit that she was illegally detained in the San Juan County jail, in northwestern New Mexico, after ICE requested she be held until agents could determine if she was living in the country illegally.
Palacios-Valencia was arrested by a Farmington officer in April 2012 over an unpaid traffic ticket.
Then 41 and working as a housekeeper, she had been called to a traffic stop where an officer had pulled over her brother, the lawsuit says. When she arrived, the officer discovered her unpaid ticket, hauled her to the jail and then called ICE, whose agents picked her up 10 days after she was incarcerated, according to the suit.
When ICE suspects that a jail inmate is in the country illegally, the agency requests that local officials continue to detain the person for up to 48 hours after the jail release date so that federal agents have more time to investigate the inmate’s immigration status and make an arrest.
Immigration lawyers have said that ICE detainer requests are not legally binding. Santa Fe County doesn’t honor these detainer requests unless a suspect is accused of a serious violent crime.
An ICE spokeswoman in El Paso declined to answer questions from The New Mexican on the federal settlement.
By entering the agreement, reached March 3, the settlement says, San Juan County officials are not admitting any wrongdoing.
The settlement won’t have final approval until Aug. 10, when the judge has scheduled a hearing to determine if the agreement is fair for the class, the order says.
Johnson also ordered that anyone who was held in the San Juan County jail because of an immigration detainer between November 2011 and March 2017 be given a notice of the settlement. Those who file a claim may be paid $2,000 if they qualify to be part of the classaction suit.
President Donald Trump has said some law enforcement agencies put U.S. citizens at risk by not questioning suspects about their immigration status or by refusing to hold them in jail long enough for ICE agents to pick them up. In some cases, the president has said, those immigrants commit crimes after their release.
Trump signed two executive orders in January detailing more aggressive immigration policies, including a proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. One order created a new office within the Department of Homeland Security tasked with publishing a weekly report on crimes committed by noncitizen immigrants and local jurisdictions that don’t cooperate with ICE.
The first report on jails that don’t honor ICE detainer requests lists 206 instances across the country between Jan. 28 and Feb. 3 in which a jail refused to hold an inmate beyond a release date on a federal agent’s request.
While no county jails in New Mexico work with ICE, according to the report, Gov. Susana Martinez has ordered state prison officials to cooperate with federal immigration agents. Two weeks ago, following a request from ICE, the state Corrections Department handed over a list of 60 prisoners who have declared they were not born in the U.S. — 1 percent of the state’s overall prison population.
It’s unclear how many of those 60 inmates, if any, are undocumented immigrants because New Mexico prisons don’t ask for immigration status.
“It is unfortunate that the Trump administration continues to use his unconstitutional executive order to intimidate governments into holding people in local detention facilities without the proper legal authority,” said Marcela Díaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido.
“Somos members have proactively worked with many communities across New Mexico to ensure this does not happen, but when it does, we will hold officials accountable.”