Corrections1 Staff
On any given day, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Office of Detention and Removal Operations houses a minimum of 32,000 detainees in county and city jails across the nation.
At the 2010 American Jail Association conference in Portland, Oregon, representatives from ICE hosted a workshop with Sgt. Shannon Clark of Tulsa County, Oklahoma – whose Sheriff’s Office houses 235 illegal immigrant detainees per month – to discuss how jails can reduce local crime and potentially make money by helping ICE detain illegal immigrants.
Corrections1 sat down with Sgt. Clark after the workshop to discuss several available options for collaboration with ICE.
Section 287(g)
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes DHS to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies, permitting designated officers at approved facilities to perform immigration law enforcement functions.
“What this means,” Clark said, “is that we are trained and certified to identify if (local residents) are illegal aliens.”
Under Section 287(g) officers at your local agency can be trained by ICE to help account for your local illegal immigrant population.
Tulsa County’s Sheriff, Stanley Glanz, decided to get involved after he recognized that larger agencies in the U.S. were seeing “a reduction in crime by involving themselves with 287(g),” Clark said.
“If someone is in our country illegally, often we’ve got no data on them,” he said. “So they’re coming into our communities, committing these illegal acts and nobody can track them down.”
But under 287(g), Tulsa has been able to work with ICE to pull in illegal immigrants from their local area. In turn, this has helped to lower county crime rates in general.
Illegal immigration detention site
Getting certified under 287(g) can help local agencies to lower crime, but it won’t help with budget issues. There are, however, other ICE certifications that can.
Tulsa County’s David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center is certified as a federal illegal alien detention site. Becoming an ICE detention site involves rigorous and constant inspections from all kinds of federal agencies from DHS to the FBI, and it isn’t for every jail.
However, it is a natural progression from a Section 287(g) certification and, once your jail becomes a detention site, ICE will then pay your agency to house illegal aliens in your facility.
This has proved financially beneficial for Tulsa County and other agencies across the country during recent trying economic times.
Transporting detainees
When Tulsa County became an illegal immigration detention site, they were simultaneously certified to transport illegal aliens, too.
“We are paid by ICE to move illegal aliens,” Clark said. They take inmates to court, to the airport or to anywhere else within the distance agreed upon. ICE pays for all of this.
Agencies across the country can get involved with moving aliens for ICE. However, like becoming a detention center or certifying officers under section 287(g), it’s a lengthy process that involves much commitment.
Getting started with ICE
It starts with an application sent to DHS. Representatives from ICE then visit your agency to see if it would be eligible and valuable to the program for which you’re applying.
If approved, “that’s when the politics start,” Clark said, as congressional delegations often need to compete for limited ICE resources.
Eventually, if your agency makes the cut, officers from your jail will enroll in a training program with ICE (five weeks for Section 287(g), but more extensive for other certifications).
It’s a lengthy process, but for the right agency, the benefits can be extremely high.
For more information on a variety of ways your agency can work with ICE, explore their website by clicking here.