Wasco County Sheriff Lane Magill explained at a meeting last Saturday that a 1987 state law prohibits city, county and state police from acting in any capacity to help with immigration efforts.
However, if a person is arrested, state law allows — and federal law requires — the local jail to provide that information to immigration officials.
And while some jails across the country refuse to comply with that federal law, the Northern Oregon Regional Corrections Facility in The Dalles does comply. The jail serves Hood River, Wasco, Sherman and Gilliam counties.
While local police do not act as immigration agents, the notifications to Immigration and Customs Enforcement do assist the work that ICE does.
Magill told the crowd of 80 at the event at St. Mary’s Academy, “Can I be real blunt? Just don’t commit any crimes.”
The immigration information event featured immigration Attorney Brittan Schwartz, who practices in Seattle but is from The Dalles, and local law officers.
A Hispanic organizer of the event, who asked not to be named, told the crowd the town was lucky to have law enforcement officers who wanted to communicate with the Hispanic community. She said she believed local police want to defend and protect Hispanics, and urged the audience to listen to what they had to say.
Magill said the jail’s contract with ICE has nothing to do with how local law enforcement conducts its work.
Magill said it was important to him that everybody, regardless of ethnicity, is treated the same.
“You’re part of the community. Federal law is federal law. When you deal with us, you’re dealing with local police and we follow state law,” Magill said.
At the regional jail, all persons arrested have their information entered into criminal databases, said jail Lt. Dan Lindhorst, who was not at the meeting. That information is then available to a number of other entities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and even Interpol, an international police organization.
“ICE will contact us by phone and say, ‘Do you actually have this individual?’ And if they want them, they’ll send us the paperwork,” Lindhorst said.
They send what’s called a detainer, which is separate from a warrant, and is a request to hold people suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
If an arrestee is about to make bail, the jail will give a call to the closest ICE office, in Portland, and alert them, giving them about two hours’ notice to allow drive time to get here, he said.
He said “almost 100 percent” of the arrestees that ICE shows an interest in, they come and get. “They’re usually johnny-on-the-spot.”
“They don’t always put detainers on people. It depends on how much they want them.”
He said if ICE is interested, but the arrestee posts bail “in the middle of the night, they’re not going to respond and (the arrestee will) more than likely walk out the door. And we say (to ICE), ‘Sorry, you’re going to have to find them elsewhere.’ Let’s face it, most of the guys here are not big-time guys.”
Lindhorst said the jail doesn’t keep statistics on how often ICE comes to pick up arrestees.
Almost since the jail opened in 1999, it has had a contract to hold detainees for ICE. It is the only jail in Oregon with such a contract, Lindhorst said.
And since the beginning, the jail has made a distinction about who it would not hold for ICE. “If they’re just undocumented, we won’t hold them.” They will only hold people with criminal records.
“We didn’t feel right in doing the undocumented people, and that was before this whole immigration thing that started with Trump,” he said.
Right now, the jail rents 40 of the 130 beds it uses to the federal government, with most beds used by ICE and an occasional bed used by the U.S. Marshals Service. The jail has 250 beds, but only enough staffing to use half of them.
Lindhorst said people look at the list of inmates on the jail’s website and wrongly assume those with Hispanic names are destined for deportation. He said many of the Hispanics arrested are locally born.
If a person gets a traffic ticket but doesn’t pay it, a warrant is issued for their arrest. If they get arrested, then ICE would be notified by the jail, and ICE could place a detainer on the person.
The Dalles Police Sgt. Dan Nelson said he would like to see more Hispanics come forward to report crimes, as either victims or witnesses. He feels many in the Hispanic community are too afraid of police to come forward with information.“We are not going to ask anything about your immigration status,” he said.
He said there are advantages if people report crimes because some visas are available to immigrant crime victims. A resource for that is HAVEN from Domestic and Sexual Violence in The Dalles, at 541-298-4789.
Schwartz advised undocumented parents to make arrangements for their children’s care, and for the care of their property, in the event they get arrested.
For the majority of undocumented people, if they get arrested it will be their first contact with ICE, since most have no criminal history or previous removal orders, Schwartz said.
In all likelihood, they will be released back to their family in less than a month, she said. If immigration agents come to a person’s workplace, Schwartz said, they can ask if they are being detained. If not, they can simply walk away.
She said unless an agent shows up to a workplace with a photo of the person being sought and an arrest warrant for the individual, the workplace does not have to provide access to the individual.
An audience member asked about how to identify ICE officers if they come to the door. Magill said his deputies are always in uniform.
He said every person has the right to ask an officer for their identification and who they are with. If they can’t give an answer, he suggested calling local police.
Ashmore cautioned that asking an ICE officer for ID could create a problem for the person. He said it could be helpful to have witnesses. “If you’re by yourself, I don’t know what to say about that.”
Schwartz described deceptive practices by ICE officers.
She said a client of her law firm had someone come to his door, tell him his son was in an accident and he needed to take him to the hospital. As soon as the man stepped outside, he was arrested by the person, who was an ICE agent.
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NORCOR was created through an intergovernmental agreement between the four Oregon counties.
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