IMMIGRATION
day by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is the first weekly account required by an executive order issued in January by President Donald Trump. It is meant to “highlight jurisdictions that choose not to cooperate with ICE detainers or requests for notification, therefore potentially endangering Americans,” the agency said in a news release.
According to the report, Clark County had the highest number of immigration detainers issued to an uncooperative jurisdiction. From Jan. 28 through Feb. 3, it said, the county received 51 “detainers” — requests for local jails to hold potentially deportable inmates for up to 48 hours — from ICE. METRO FIRES BACK Metro called the report unfair. “We believe the report released today by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unfairly portrays the LVMPD as a ‘non-cooperative jurisdiction,’” the agency said in a statement Monday afternoon. “The LVMPD does, in fact, participate in the 287(g) program as a jail-based review of immigration status and has for many years.”
The statement was referring to ICE’s “delegated authority” program, which allows local corrections officers to be deputized as immigration agents.
During a conference call about the report Monday morning, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said the Department of Homeland Security was unable to confirm where the report’s data — specifically the 51 detainers mentioned in the report — came from.
“Nobody’s providing clarification,” Lombardo said. “That becomes very frustrating when you’re taking calls all day about an inaccurate report.”
The report does not note the outcome of the detainer requests sent to Clark County. A subsequent section of the report that lists individual cases in which detainer requests were declined does not include any instances in Clark County.
That section also included at least one error: It mistakenly listed 14 rejected detainers for the Travis County Jail in Texas, cases that were actually handled by the State Jail in Texas, a separate facility run by Texas’ prisons system. ICE corrected the mistake hours after its release, the Associated Press reported.
To back up its description of Clark County, the report cited the 2014 decision by then-Sheriff Doug Gillespie to stop honoring immigration detainers if federal authorities did not show up to take custody of inmates within 48 hours. The decision followed a federal court ruling that an Oregon county had violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by holding her in jail without cause past her “probable cause” release date.
That makes Clark County a “non-cooperative jurisdiction,” according to the report, which also noted the Washoe County sheriff enacted the same policy in 2014. NEW POLICY BEGAN IN JANUARY
But Metro has indicated it has been cooperating with federal immigration authorities this year. Since early January, department officials have said, it began running the 48hour detainer clock after notifying ICE at booking when a person was identified as a potential immigration violator. That means the detainer period largely coincides with the normal probable cause detention, thereby avoiding the issue raised in the Oregon case, department officials say.
Lombardo said there might be merit to the idea that ICE is trying to pressure local jurisidictions, offering the threat of withholding federal grant money as another example. He acknowledged the 2014 decision, but he said things have changed.
“We re-engaged with them on that, and they still keep quoting what happened in 2014,” he said.
The department has carefully framed its cooperation as a tool for getting rid of the worst criminals, an approach with which the ACLU of Nevada agrees.
“Southern Nevada, especially the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, has worked extensively to build and retain relationships with the community regardless of their immigration status,” the ACLU’s Story said. Contact Wesley Juhl at wjuhl@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0391. Follow @WesJuhl on Twitter.