While state legislation requiring North Carolina Sheriffs to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been moved to the back burner in the midst of a state budget fight in Raleigh, a recent appearance by Beaufort County Sheriff Ernie Coleman on Fox News has sparked renewed interest in the topic locally.

House Bill 370, which Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed last week, would require North Carolina sheriffs to comply with requests from ICE to hold inmates in local jails for questioning and possible deportation under a request known as an ICE detainer.

Initially, the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association opposed H.B. 370 due to perceived impositions on local authority to run detention centers. Changes to the bill during the legislative process addressed those concerns, however, prompting the organization to reverse course and support the legislation.

BY THE NUMBERS

According to ICE data compiled by Syracuse University under the Freedom of Information Act, from July 2010 through November 2018, a total of 99 people were held on ICE detainers in the Beaufort County Detention Center. That number peaked during the 2013-14 fiscal year, with a total of 24 people held for ICE. In all 99 cases, the data indicates the BCSO honored those requests, with ICE taking custody of each individual from the detention center.

Just next door in Pitt County, that number is much higher — 571 people were held on ICE detainers at the Pitt County Detention Center during the same time period. By comparison, the numbers of ICE detainers at facilities in large metropolitan areas like Wake, Mecklenburg, Forsyth and Durham counties number in the thousands during the same span. These are some of the same counties where sheriffs are refusing to comply with the ICE detainer requests.

ALREADY COOPERATING

Locally, Coleman says his agency treats ICE detainers and administrative warrants the same as they would requests and warrants from any other agency, whether federal, state or local. In essence, he says the legislation wouldn’t have much impact on the way his office does business.

“It’s no different with illegal immigrants,” Coleman said. “They come in, are processed the same way and treated the same way.”

The sheriff says while his agency contacts ICE when a given name shows a request for an ICE detainer, not every person in the country illegally is listed in the ICE database.

“That person, if they’re on the ICE list, that means that that person, somewhere in the past, has had contact with law enforcement, ICE, immigration, customs, something where they have already been vetted out,” Coleman said. “The names on that list have already either committed a crime and got in the system or been deported back. Their name doesn’t just pop up as a citizen of Venezuela.”

Coleman said the topic has been complicated by political rhetoric, both at the state and national levels, as well as a number of high-profile cases where individuals released on ICE detainers have gone on to commit serious crimes in counties where sheriffs aren’t cooperating with ICE.

“I’ve got relatives in those jurisdictions, in Wake County and Mecklenburg County,” Coleman said. “The odds of them having a crime committed against them are low, but if one person is raped or murdered in the next three and a half years (those sheriffs are in office), that’s one too many.”

Ultimately, at the BCSO, business will continue as usual amid the controversy, including continued compliance with ICE detainers.