The Great Immigrant Rights Debate – What to do About ICE Detainers

A few months ago local authorities were given a large amount of bad publicity for holding illegals for ICE detainers. An ‘ICE detainer’ is an immigration hold that is used by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to apprehend individuals who are obtained by local and/or state law enforcement and given to the federal deportation system. The ICE detainer is a written request from the ICE for an additional 48 hour hold to see if the individual is eligible for release or needs to be given to federal custody for permanent removal. You can see why civil rights activists had a problem with this request.

Recently a spokesman for ICE made accusations that a New Jersey jail was ignoring the ICE detainers and releasing alleged criminals that were facing deportation. Although ICE detainers do not obligate local and state authorities to obey them, it is important that these various jurisdictions understand that ignoring the detainers could have public safety risks.

A spokesman for the New Jersey ICE said, “When serious criminal offenders are released to the streets in a community, rather than to ICE custody, it undermines ICE’s ability to protect public safety and impedes us from enforcing the nation’s immigration laws”.

It is unclear how many ICE detainer request have been ignored in the New Jersey area, but the warden of the Camden County Jail admitted they have their one ‘procedure’ for ICE detainers. Warden David Owens says they give ICE a 1-day ‘heads up’ that they are going to release someone, but will not keep them for the additional time requested in the detainer.

New Jersey is not the first state to act against the detainer request, we have seen California and Oregon authorities speak out about the violation of civil right by holding aliens. In June California’s attorney general warned California police departments, statewide, that if they honored the ICE request for someone without a serious criminal record they would be violating the Trust Act and breaking the law.