Amid surge, some greater Minnesota sheriffs plan to continue cooperation with ICE
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U.S. border czar Tom Homan has said he'd take federal immigration agents out of Minnesota if local leaders cooperated, including allowing the federal government more access to people in county jails.
Some greater Minnesota counties already cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and say they have no plans to change the practice, despite controversy over the recent federal enforcement surge in Minnesota.
More than half a dozen Minnesota counties have signed agreements to assist ICE to varying degrees, from detaining people in county jails to helping federal agents find and arrest people suspected of immigration violations or other crimes.
On Jan. 26, Crow Wing County Sheriff Eric Klang issued a news release saying his office had helped ICE's Homeland Security Investigations team arrest four people at El Potro, a Mexican restaurant in downtown Brainerd — an action that sparked a vigil by faith leaders and community members. The day after the arrests, they gathered outside the restaurant, holding candles and singing hymns.
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Crow Wing County signed so-called 287(g) agreements with ICE last year, after the Trump administration expanded the program. Klang said the agreements haven’t changed much about how the county interacts with federal agencies.
“I've always worked with our local, state and federal partners,” he said. “And nothing is going to change because of political winds or emotionally charged incidents.”
Under the warrant model of the 287(g) agreement with ICE, Klang said his staff took online training so they can serve an immigration detainer on someone in the county jail. A detainer is a request to hold an inmate for another agency.
Crow Wing County also has a task force model agreement with ICE, which allows deputies to enforce immigration law during routine police work — something that so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions typically do not do.
Crow Wing County also allows federal detainees suspected of immigration violations to be housed in its county jail. It contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service to house between 30 and 50 people. Freeborn, Kandiyohi and Sherburne Counties also have federal agreements to detain immigrants in their county jails.
Klang said most people he’s heard from are supportive of Crow Wing County's cooperation with ICE.
“Of course, there are a lot of people that are upset about it as well, and I understand that,” he said.
Mille Lacs County also signed the task force model agreement with ICE last year. Sheriff Kyle Burton said it's meant his deputies have worked with ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations to locate and arrest about nine people so far.
"The focus is folks that have criminal records while they're here illegally,” he said.
Burton said nothing about the recent federal immigration surge has caused him to rethink the county's relationship with ICE. In fact, he thinks it's helped avoid the chaos surrounding the enforcement action in the Twin Cities.
"We don't have those problems here in my county because we communicate and we partner with these men and women so that we don't have miscommunications or misunderstandings,” Burton said. “Or, so I don't have 30 ICE agents showing up in my county conducting a search warrant or raid and I don't know about it.”
But the idea of counties helping federal agents to enforce immigration law is controversial.
Last year, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said sheriffs cannot unilaterally sign agreements with ICE without approval from their county boards. As a result of that opinion, Cass and Itasca counties reportedly have paused their agreements with ICE and not pursued training for sheriff’s deputies.
Courts also have ruled that county jails cannot legally hold someone beyond the time they're scheduled to be released solely on a request from ICE.
Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt says she has had “healthy” conversations with Homan, the White House official in charge of the Minnesota immigration enforcement surge.
Witt told NPR that if ICE has a signed judicial warrant for a person in her jail, her officers honor that. But ICE often doesn’t have a signed warrant, so the jail is required by law to release people.
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office doesn't currently notify ICE when it releases someone from jail who has an administrative detainer, meaning ICE asks a jail to hold someone without a warrant signed by a judge. But Witt said she is considering changing that policy.
“If that were to change — and that’s an if, right — you’re going to have to show me how it's going to make Hennepin County residents safer, and you’re going to have to actually act good on what you say,” Witt said.
The Minnesota Sheriffs Association says it met with Homan to discuss ways to improve coordination between counties and ICE. No details of a proposal have been released.
KAXE/KBXE contributed to this report.
