Trump pressures 'sanctuary cities' that won't hold undocumented immigrants
Corrections & Clarifications: A previous version of this story misstated which local jurisdictions turned down the highest number of detainers during the week covered by the report.
In a move to put public pressure on "sanctuary cities," the Department of Homeland Security on Monday published a list of 118 localities that have refused to cooperate with federal requests to detain undocumented immigrants.
President Trump ordered the department to publish a weekly list of all detention requests turned down by local jails, listing the agency, the undocumented immigrants and the charges they face. In an executive order signed Jan. 25, Trump said the list is necessary to "better inform the public regarding the public safety threats associated with sanctuary jurisdictions."
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to start producing the list last month, and on Monday, the agency issued its first public report.
It lists 206 cases in which undocumented immigrants were arrested on local charges and were set to be released from jails. ICE officials requested that the local authorities hold onto those people for up to 48 hours — a request known as a "detainer" — but the requests were denied.
The 206 denials took place the week of Jan. 28 through Feb. 3, although the arrests occurred as early as 2014.
The charges range from homicide and rape to driving violations and probation violations. The majority of cases, 56%, were people charged with crimes but not convicted. Under President Barack Obama, undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes were considered priorities for deportation. Trump changed those priorities to include undocumented immigrants accused of any crime.
Travis County, Texas, turned down the most detainers during the week of the report: 142. Boulder County, Colo., was second with six, and Williamson County, Texas, was third with four.
The report also lists all the jurisdictions ICE said have formal policies preventing cooperation, and ranks the top 10 based on detainer requests the localities received from Jan. 28 through Feb. 3. Clark County, Nev., received the most, 51; followed by Nassau County, N.Y., 38, and Cook County, Ill., 13. Those detainer requests are pending, although the report said that ICE expects them to be denied.
ICE detainers have been a controversial issue for years, as several federal courts have ruled that local authorities are under no legal obligation to honor them. But Trump said "sanctuary jurisdictions" that don't fully comply with federal immigration requests will be punished with the loss of federal grants. Hundreds of local police agencies depend on hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from Homeland Security and the Justice Department.
One agency listed in the report is the Boulder County, Colo., Sheriff's Office. Sheriff Joe Pelle said his jail formally adopted a policy in 2014 after a series of court rulings that nobody would be detained without a warrant. The ICE detainers were not the same as a warrant signed by a judge, the courts said, and counties that held prisoners without that legal authority could be sued.
Pelle said Monday he will abide by those court rulings, not the Trump administration's decrees.
"They can shame all they want, but there's a lot of case law out there from three different federal courts, and it all says the same thing," Pelle said. "We are not honoring detainers. We would absolutely honor a federal arrest warrant signed by a federal judge or magistrate."
Contributing: Trevor Hughes