Minnesota sheriffs ink new agreements with ICE to identify immigrants for deportation
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By: Andrew Hazzard, Sahan Journal
This story comes to you from Sahan Journal through a partnership with MPR News. Use the audio player above to listen to a conversation between Sahan Journal reporter Andrew Hazzard and MPR News host Nina Moini. This conversation was produced by Alanna Elder.
Five Minnesota sheriff’s offices have entered cooperation agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, bringing a controversial program coordinating local law enforcement and federal immigration agents to the North Star State.
The Cass, Crow Wing, Freeborn, Itasca and Jackson County sheriff’s offices have entered 287g agreements with ICE since President Donald Trump took office, according to ICE records. The program, named for a clause in an immigration law, allows ICE to delegate authority to local law enforcement agencies to perform some immigration enforcement functions.
The agreements generally increase the risks to immigrant communities, according to Julia Decker, an attorney with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.
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“It makes it more likely that contact with local law enforcement will lead to more contact with immigration authorities,” Decker said.
Five counties recently entered cooperation agreements with ICE, and three counties have long contracted with ICE to hold ICE detainees in their jails.
The agreements have historically led to complaints of racial profiling. In 2012, the Obama administration ended use of one 287g model, the “task force” program, which granted local law enforcement authority to question and detain people based on immigration status. Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office reopening the task force program.
That’s troubling, according to Benjamin Casper, an immigration attorney with the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The agreements have the potential to sweep up innocent bystanders such as the family members or co-workers of people who are being targeted because they lack legal immigration status. The agreements can also lead to civil rights violations and create an environment where immigrants and their families are hesitant to cooperate with local law enforcement on issues in their communities, he said.
“Lots of citizens will be afraid for their own civil liberties and safety to interact with local law enforcement who are cooperating with federal immigration agencies,” Casper said.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office said while they have no authority over 287g agreements, they encourage local law enforcement to consider potential issues that could arise from such partnerships.
“While 287g agreements are sometimes touted as a tool for getting violent offenders off the street, studies have shown that large numbers of people detained through 287g-related enforcement have committed only misdemeanors or traffic violations,” said John Stiles, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office.
Crow Wing County Sheriff Eric Klang said his office signed up for the 287g task force program to stay on top of cooperating with federal agencies.
Crow Wing County’s agreement began March 25, according to ICE records. The Crow Wing Sheriff’s Office, headquartered in Brainerd, has about 50 deputies on staff. Klang said around four will receive ICE training for the 287g program, and that he still needs to vet the training process. Klang said that when he spoke with ICE about the agreement, the federal agency was still working to determine what the arrangements would look like. “We’re going to assist where they ask us to assist, but we’re not going to go rounding people up at beef farms or meat packing plants or Mexican restaurants,” Klang said.
How the program works
The 287g program has three models. Two, the “warrant service officer” and “jail enforcement” models, focus on identifying and processing immigrants eligible for deportation who are already in state or local custody. The jail enforcement model additionally allows local officers to question suspected immigrants about their legal status. A third, the “task force model,” enlists local agencies to serve as what ICE calls a “force multiplier” to enforce some immigration statutes.
The Cass, Crow Wing and Itasca County sheriff’s offices in northern Minnesota entered into task force agreements with ICE. In southern Minnesota, Freeborn County has a warrant service officer model, and Jackson County has both a warrant service officer and jail enforcement model agreement, according to ICE records.
Klang, of Crow Wing County, was the only sheriff to return calls from Sahan Journal seeking comment.
Freeborn, Kandiyohi and Sherburne counties all have long standing contracts with ICE to house immigration inmates in their jails. Those are separate from 287g agreements, and have been in place across presidential administrations from both parties.
Select officers from law enforcement agencies participating in 287g agreements will attend a 40-hour ICE training. The agencies must regularly contact their closest ICE field office when carrying out immigration duties. Local law enforcement agencies are not compensated for enrolling in the program.
Whether the agreements are allowed in Minnesota is an open legal question, Stiles said. Ellison’s office didn’t reach a determination on the matter in a February 6 legal opinion the attorney general sent to Ramsey County Attorney John Choi. The opinion declared that Minnesota law prohibits local law enforcement agencies from holding people based on immigration detainers if there are no other reasons, such as criminal accusations, to hold them in custody.
Casper, with the ACLU, said he believes Minnesota law does not allow local law enforcement to make arrests solely on immigration detainers.
“I think a lot of them may be under the perception that entering into one of these programs provides legal cover and authorization for their arrests of noncitizens, when there is no authorization of this under Minnesota law,” Casper said.
‘There definitely has been an uptick’
The Freeborn County jail is seeing a growth in immigration inmates since it entered an agreement with ICE, according to jail deputy Dylan Dopp.
“There definitely has been an uptick,” Dopp said.
Inmates with immigration holds make up the majority of the jail’s population today; there are about three ICE detainees for every one inmate being held for non-immigration issues, Dopp said.
Klang said his office in Crow Wing County will stay clear of immigration style raids, and would only pursue immigration enforcement action on people who are committing serious crimes. He’s heard concerns about the program leading to people without criminal charges ending up in custody, but said his office won’t go about it that way. Klang said he doesn’t want to go to a Mexican restaurant that has “all white people working there.”
Casper said he believes most sheriffs are entering into these agreements with good intentions, but cautioned that they pose risks.
“I don’t think they really get what we’re about to face,” Casper said.
The agreements can harm trust between law enforcement and immigrant communities, he said, particularly today, when the Trump administration is taking a more aggressive removal approach to people with minor criminal histories or international students in the United States on visas. Two international students in Minnesota were arrested by ICE in March, and at least eight more had their legal student status revoked, meaning they must leave the country.
“That’s an environment where a lot of people are going to be scared of anyone messing with ICE,” Casper said.
The agreements can also open local agencies up to lawsuits from people who are improperly detained, he said.
Audio transcript
ANDREW HAZZARD: Thank you for having me.
NINA MOINI: So with issues surrounding ICE right now, it's so important to have this deep, thorough reporting and really break down what things look like and the different processes. So to start with some context, immigration cases play out in civil courts, correct, separate from the criminal justice system? Can you describe when these two systems would overlap?
ANDREW HAZZARD: Yeah, that's a great point. So as you mentioned, immigration matters are civil. They're handled. Here in Minnesota, we have in immigration court down at Fort Snelling. And those are not technically considered criminal procedures. What can happen is that if someone is going through a criminal proceeding, let's say someone gets arrested for drunk driving or something like that, and if they are not a citizen, that can be communicated, potentially, to immigration authorities.
And that can result in a placement of what's called an immigration detainer, which is where ICE or the federal agencies would say, hey, we want to hold on to this person for extra time beyond their criminal proceeding or their criminal serving of time in a local jail or whatnot so that we can engage them in this civil process, potentially, for deportation. So it's basically having an interaction in a criminal system could set you up for having an interaction through that civil immigration process.
NINA MOINI: OK, so that's been ongoing. Now, these agreements that you're reporting on that have been signed, really, just since late February, it sounds like, can you describe how those came about and where?
ANDREW HAZZARD: Yes. So when President Trump retook office this January, he signed an executive order to restart a portion of what's known as the 287(g) program. That is named for a clause in a 1996 immigration law that created these partnerships between local law enforcement and immigration enforcement.
So the way that these can play out is that different local law enforcement agencies can sign up for these agreements with ICE and enter what's known as a memorandum of agreement. And they agree to perform certain duties. They receive additional training for a few officers, in this case, in Minnesota, it'd be sheriff's deputies, to carry out some of these immigration enforcement, which can be in addition to their normal policing activity, or it could be at county jails.
So this program has existed for close to 30 years. But in 2012, the Obama administration ended a major component of the program, which is known as the task force model. Now, the task force model deputizes immigration authority to officers who have gone through this training, where they can basically interrogate people about their immigration status or investigate them from an immigration standpoint in the course of their normal police work.
And this was banned in 2012. People might be familiar with the case of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County. That was a famous case, where many people of Latino backgrounds were being profiled aggressively in this part of Arizona as part of this program. And it became a concern for civil liberties and was dropped.
President Trump reactivated that portion of the program when he retook office, and it launched this invitation to local law enforcement agencies to sign up for these 287(g) agreements. And so far, here in Minnesota, since the end of February, five counties have done so. There are three counties up in Lake Country, North Central Minnesota, Cass, Crow Wing, and Itasca counties, who have signed up for this task force model.
There are two counties in Southern Minnesota, Jackson and Freeborn County, that have signed up for models that have existed this entire time, which allow deputies to question or flag people that are in their jail system who might be in this country without permission or that sort of thing to communicate that with immigration authorities.
NINA MOINI: OK, so I understand that you-- obviously, as a journalist, you did reach out to the sheriffs and the counties. And only the Sheriff from Crow Wing County got back to you. What did they say was their reasoning here? It sounded like, from your article, that they were saying this isn't a cause for, really, concern.
ANDREW HAZZARD: Right. So as you mentioned, I did try and contact all five of these sheriffs. I did hear back from Sheriff Eric Klang, who called me back and talked a little bit about his reasoning for getting involved up in Crow Wing County. That's where Brainerd is. So his rationale was that, look, this is a new program that's opening up for us to cooperate with federal enforcement, and we're going to sign up for it.
He has not yet put his deputies who are going to participate in the program through this training. They're supposed to take 40 hours of training with ICE before they really get going. And they don't know exactly what it's going to look like. And Sheriff Klang told me that, when he was talking to ICE about it, that it seemed clear to him that ICE isn't exactly sure what it wants these agreements to look like with local law enforcement, either. This program has basically been dormant for over a dozen years. And so figuring out how to revive it and what it looks like is still up in the air.
But his line to me was that this is about cooperating with the feds and that he does not intend to turn his office or have his deputies out there doing immigration-style raids. But these types of agreements were cause for concern in the past due to the potential of profiling, of civil liberty violations, and also people who aren't necessarily involved in any criminal activity being caught up as other people are pursued through these sorts of agreements.
NINA MOINI: So what is next? Could we see legal challenges to these agreements? It sounds like they're above board from what they know, bringing back this program that you said was dormant. But where are immigration attorneys on this and other advocates? Is this something that you're seeing people wanting to jump on and take it to the courts, or where does everything stand?
ANDREW HAZZARD: I think right now the understanding is that this program, from a federal standpoint, is legal and that there's not too much that can be done. When the federal government wants to do something, they can do it. Of course, the legal question that's up for debate. But this program has a history. It has a precedent. The opportunity for a legal challenge to this program would certainly be in the way in which it is carried about in the State of Minnesota, and whether or not that agrees with the state's law and constitution.
The Minnesota attorney general's office this year put out an opinion to the Ramsey County attorney's office that was basically saying that Minnesota does not allow for local law enforcement, local jails, to hold somebody for an additional amount of time because of a request from immigration authorities.
So let's say someone is in for a crime at your local jail, they would typically be able to be released on some sort of bond after 24 hours or any amount of time. They'd be able to be released. Sometimes immigration will say, hey, we want to put a hold on this person. Please hold them for an extra 48 hours. The Minnesota attorney general's office is saying you can't do that here. You're not supposed to do that here. That does not necessarily overlap with these 287(g) agreements.
NINA MOINI: OK.
ANDREW HAZZARD: So how and if a legal challenge could come to these operating in Minnesota, that remains unclear. But these are cases that have been fought out by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union in other states. We've seen that in Colorado. And so I do think it could be a situation, whether it's in Minnesota or elsewhere, that is ripe for a legal challenge or something to go through the court system. But these are all very new. And so we're going to have to wait and see.
NINA MOINI: Sure. Yeah, like a lot of things right now. Andrew, thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your important reporting with us again. I really appreciate your time.
ANDREW HAZZARD: Thank you. Good to be with you.
NINA MOINI: Andrew Hazzard is a reporter for Sahan Journal. You can find his story at mprnews.org.
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