Residents have been attending the Kenton County Fiscal Court meetings since December to call for an end to ICE cooperation. A candidate for the new Covington City Council is also calling for explicit policies establishing legal guardrails against ICE agents in the city.
This is not the first time that Northern Kentucky residents have shown up to their county fiscal court asking them to end their agreements with ICE. Several residents attended the Kenton County Fiscal Court meeting on Jan. 13 and the Campbell County Fiscal Court meeting on Jan. 21.
“We’ve been here since early December,” Michael Staverman said at the Jan. 27 Kenton County Fiscal Court meeting. “It’s clear we’re going to keep coming back.”
The meeting was well attended, with six speakers during public comment asking the fiscal court to reconsider an intergovernmental agreement to cooperate with ICE and house ICE detainees in the county detention center.
They called upon the county to terminate the 287(g) agreement, a designation derived from Section 287 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows ICE to delegate enforcement functions to local police departments.
“Kenton County should pull back entirely from 287 (g),” said Kenton County resident Kayla Reed. “Do not house people with no criminal record. Do not turn local police into federal immigration agents. Keep police local and accountable. Focus on real crime, not traumatizing children and families. Pull me over if I roll through a stop sign in Villa Hills. I’m sure I do it often, but I refuse to stay silent when my tax dollars in my police are used to terrorize human beings.”
All three detention centers in Northern Kentucky have contracts with the U.S. Marshals to house ICE detainees; on paper, ICE agreements are subcontracts with the U.S. Marshals. Kenton County is a comparative latecomer to such agreements, only beginning to house ICE detainees in the middle of last year. In contrast, Boone County Jail’s contract with ICE goes back to 2005.
Covington City Council candidate Tom Hull, who has spoken about policing and other issues before the board of commissioners in the past, pitched a handful of policies at the Board meeting on Jan. 13 that the city could enact to ensure the city had immigrant residents’ backs:
- Establishing clear training for local police on how to interact with ICE agents and what the legal limits of those agents’ authority are.
- Help city residents identify the difference between local police and federal enforcers by teaching how to identify distinct uniforms and other markings that set the two institutions apart.
- Inform residents as to their rights and obligations when it comes to dealing with both local police and federal agents.
- Disallow the use of masks by enforcers within the city.
Hull reiterated his remarks on Tuesday.
“The city has an obligation and should want to let the people know how they can stay safe and what the city is going to do to keep them safe in the event that we do have federal law enforcement here,” Hull said Tuesday night. “No one wants violent incidents on the street.”