Sheriffs ignoring hold-alien orders

Legal fears cited, not politics

LOS ANGELES -- None of the sheriffs in California's 58 counties are willing to hold inmates past their release dates to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to check whether they are in the U.S. illegally, and that has drawn fire from officials in President Donald Trump's administration.

Two weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security started issuing a weekly report that aims to identify and publicly shame law enforcement agencies that release people from custody despite Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to hold them two days longer than they would otherwise be locked up. The requests are known as detainers.

But several sheriffs said their defiance is not rooted in ethical or political opposition, but in legal concerns.

"Sheriffs aren't going to come close to a Fourth Amendment violation that is going to expose them to liability," said Adam Christianson, the three-term sheriff of Stanislaus County, east of the Bay Area. Christianson said he won't risk violating the amendment protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures, but otherwise he's glad to help federal immigration agents nab people for deportation. He said he gives them access to his jails, where they interview inmates and scroll through computer databases.

[U.S. immigration: Data visualization of selected immigration statistics, U.S. border map]

Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones also allows immigration agents to work inside his jails, and he shares inmate information with them.

"No one cooperates with [immigration agents] as much as we do," Jones said.

So he was confused to see his office included in the first "Declined Detainer Outcome Report" for what federal officials said was releasing two inmates for whom immigration agents had issued detainers.

"I don't even know what that means, since we don't honor any detainers," Jones said.

The National Sheriffs' Association said most sheriff's offices around the United States have also stopped honoring immigration agents' hold requests because of legal concerns.

California's most serious criminals -- such as murderers, rapists and violent gang members -- serve their sentences in state prisons, which do hold inmates for immigration agents for up to 48 hours after their release, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. A department spokesman said prison officials believe the legal concerns over detainers are limited to local lockups.

The county jails, meanwhile, are largely filled with lower-level felony offenders, those convicted of misdemeanors and inmates awaiting trial, who either serve relatively short sentences or might be eligible for release on bail. In such cases, immigration agents might receive short notice of an impending release, if they receive any warning at all.

When people are arrested and booked into custody, their fingerprints and other identifying information are typically transmitted electronically to federal databases. Immigration agents check the arrest data against internal databases of people believed to be in the country illegally.

The agency lacks the manpower to take custody the moment each inmate is released. Holding inmates for an additional two days gives agents the ability to schedule regular visits to jails in their territory to take custody of inmates to be released.

The large territory that immigration agents cover in California exacerbates the challenges. The Los Angeles field office, for example, is responsible for an area that includes seven counties that span more than 35,000 square miles -- about two-thirds the size of Arkansas.

In 2014, a ruling by a federal magistrate judge in Oregon upended the use of detainers. The case involved a woman who sued Clackamas County after she was arrested on suspicion of violating a domestic violence restraining order and immigration agents issued a detainer while they investigated whether she was in the country illegally. County jailers informed her she would not be released even though a court said she could be let out on bail.

The magistrate found the woman's extended detention violated the Fourth Amendment. The detainers, the magistrate ruled, were mere requests, not mandatory orders.

Jones, the Sacramento County sheriff, said sheriffs in California pleaded unsuccessfully with the administration of President Barack Obama to challenge the ruling. Civil-liberty groups sent letters to the state's sheriffs threatening lawsuits if they continued to honor detainers, Jones said.

In the years since the Oregon ruling, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has continued to insist that detainers "serve as a legally authorized request, upon which a law enforcement agency may rely," according to a spokesman.

Such assurances have carried no weight among many sheriffs. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, president of the California State Sheriffs' Association, as well as Jones, Christianson, several other sheriffs and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said they were unaware of any sheriff in California today who honors the agency's detainers.

A Section on 04/03/2017

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