After resident pushback over Campbell County’s ties to ICE, county officials brought the jailer before the fiscal court this week to answer lingering questions about detention contracts and enforcement practices.
Northern Kentucky residents have been showing up at their county fiscal courts to ask them to end their agreements with ICE. Several residents attended Kenton County Fiscal Court meetings on Jan. 13 and Jan. 27, as well as a Boone County Fiscal Court meeting on Jan. 27. Residents also spoke at the Campbell County Fiscal Court meeting on Jan. 21.
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.
After eight residents spoke at the Jan. 21 Campbell County Fiscal Court meeting, Campbell County Judge/Executive Steve Pendery facilitated questions from the crowd for roughly 30 minutes. At that meeting, Pendery said he was unaware the crowd would be there, and if he had known in advance, he would have asked Campbell County Jailer Jim Daley to attend to answer questions that he couldn’t.
The fiscal court did just that at its Feb. 4 meeting.
Daley was in attendance and answered questions Pendery had noted from the Jan. 21 meeting, as well as additional questions from residents in the audience.
“At the previous meeting, a group of citizens wanted to share some thoughts about ICE and the county’s relationship with that agency,” Pendery said. “We took seriously their concerns. We promised to get them answers to a few questions that we didn’t immediately have answers to.”
Residents who spoke at the January meeting pressed the county to distance itself from ICE, citing moral objections, fear of future enforcement escalation and a lack of transparency around the decision-making process.
Pendery said the county invited anyone from the group who was interested to visit the fiscal court offices for further discussion. Tuesday’s crowd was much smaller than the January meeting. Pendery said the smaller turnout was because the group’s representative is scheduled to meet with fiscal court members on Monday and had asked others to wait to attend a future meeting while additional information is gathered.
One of the questions Daley answered on Tuesday was whether the county had a jail warrant service agreement with ICE. A jail warrant service agreement, specifically the ICE Warrant Service Officer program, is a 287(g) partnership allowing local jail officers to serve administrative immigration warrants and detain individuals for ICE.
Daley said that the jail does not have that service agreement.
“Basically, what would happen is that we would have some of our folks trained and sworn in by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and then they would be able to serve warrants on folks that came in,” Daley said. “Example, would be if we have someone come in on a DUI or some other type of local arrest, and it is determined that they had illegal status, then we would be able to serve that paperwork on them instead of calling somebody from ICE to come in, I chose not to do that, and ICE would serve their own paperwork.”
The 287(g) agreement also allows ICE to delegate enforcement functions to local police departments. Daley said the jail does not have that agreement, nor is he interested in pursuing it.
Pendery said the Campbell County Police Department also does not participate in that agreement.
“This does not mean that we wouldn’t cooperate necessarily with federal agencies, but it does mean that we want to maintain control over our people,” Pendery said.
Pendery said that, for at least as long as he has been in office (since 1998), the county has had a contract with the federal government. Daley said the contract the jail has with the U.S. Marshals to house ICE detainees has been updated, probably half a dozen times, for things like changing the amount of pay the jail receives. It was updated again around last April, he said, to allow ICE to put people in the county’s facility.
Another concern residents expressed at the last meeting was that Campbell County’s jail-tracking system doesn’t show information on ICE detainees. Pendery said that it is not just ICE detainees, but no federal inmates are listed on the jail tracker program.
“That’s because of state or federal regulations and our interpretation of them,” Pendery said. “There are some other agencies that allow that information to appear, but I’ll tell you, if you read the regulation, it’s absolutely clear that that’s not right. That’s across the board for any federal prisoner; it’s just not ICE prisoners.”
Daley said that ICE detainees are not treated any differently in the county jail than any other inmate. He said that within 48 hours of someone entering the facility (including ICE detainees), they have access to mail and phones. They also have the same visitor privileges and the same counsel rights.
Resident Martha Coffman, who spoke at the Jan. 21 meeting, was in attendance on Tuesday. She said that Daley answered many of her questions over the phone but asked if the county’s contract with the U.S. Marshals to house ICE detainees has a renewal date.
Daley said he didn’t know the exact renewal date offhand, but confirmed it is a two-year contract that renews automatically.