OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Two of Nebraska’s most populous counties have stopped honoring federal requests to hold suspected immigrants in jail without a warrant, and civil rights groups are now pushing Nebraska’s largest county to also stop the practice.
Lancaster and Sarpy counties have joined Hall County in requiring a warrant for such holds, which have come under intense scrutiny from civil rights organizations. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska and Justice for Our Neighbors, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group, hope to sway Douglas County officials to reject the immigration holds in a meeting next week.
“With the population base in Nebraska being so heavily tilted toward our urban areas, we think it’s really important that Douglas County take the same step to say no to these detainer requests,” said Amy Miller, legal director for ACLU Nebraska.
John Hubbard, deputy director of Douglas County Corrections, said Wednesday that his department has asked Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine for a legal opinion on whether the jail should continue to honor the detention requests and expects an answer soon. Kleine did not return phones messages left Tuesday and Wednesday seeking comment.
The 48-hour immigration detainers are issued to local law enforcement by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The detainers ask that immigrants who have been arrested be held for two days after they would normally be released so that federal immigration officials can initiate an investigation and, if necessary, take people into custody.
About 240 county agencies around the country have stopped complying with the detainer requests, including 22 counties in Iowa, according to Shane Ellison, legal director for the Nebraska chapter of Justice for our Neighbors.
In Nebraska, there were 2,993 federal immigration holds issued in 2012 and 2013, Ellison said, citing data analyzed by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
“Douglas had the highest, with 729 in that period,” he said, adding that 109 were in Lancaster County and 139 in Sarpy County.
“Of the 2,993 holds across the state, only 12 percent - according to ICE’s own database - were in jail for more serious felony convictions,” Ellison said. “In fact, across the state, 54 percent of those ICE holds involved people who ended up with no conviction at all.”
Lancaster County Attorney Joe Kelly said Wednesday that his office issued a legal opinion, requested by the local jail, within the last two weeks determining that the hold requests didn’t carry the legal weight of arrest warrants signed by a judge. The opinion came after the ACLU sent letters to all Nebraska law enforcement agencies.
“The threat of lawsuits was part of the reasoning behind the request for the opinion,” Kelly said.
The practice has led to at least one lawsuit in Nebraska. The ACLU sued Sarpy County and the federal immigration agency on behalf of Ramon Mendoza, of Papillion, who was arrested in 2010 for misdemeanor traffic violations. The lawsuit says Mendoza - a naturalized U.S. citizen - was kept in jail for four days because officials wrongly suspected he was in the country illegally.
Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov said Wednesday that the lawsuit played a part in its decision to stop honoring the federal detention requests unless they’re accompanied by a warrant.
“We don’t have confidence in what federal (immigration) officials are doing,” Polikov said.
The Hall County Department of Corrections in central Nebraska in mid-June became the first local agency in the state to stop honoring the detainer requests.
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