Despite some word to the contrary, Clark County is not a “sanctuary county,” the Clark County Sheriff’s Office reiterated Friday afternoon.
However, Sheriff Chuck Atkins said, the county does not accept simple requests from federal immigration officials to detain people at the Clark County Jail, based on growing case law noting such requests violate the Fourth Amendment.
“Every person lodged at the Clark County Jail is lodged pursuant to either a court order, arrest warrant, or upon a sworn probable cause affidavit,” Atkins wrote in a post on Facebook. “(Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detainers, by themselves, are legally insufficient to deprive a person of their freedom and hold them in custody.”
Broadly, sanctuary jurisdictions — cities, counties and sometimes universities — decline to prosecute people for violating immigration laws or render assistance to federal immigration law enforcement officials, usually by not handing over undocumented immigrants for deportation.
Undersheriff Mike Cooke said that previously, ICE would come to a local law enforcement agency and request, usually with a simple memo or letter, to hold someone in custody for 48 hours.
“Typically, when we have somebody in jail, they’re in jail on some kind of charge,” Cooke said.
Oftentimes, he added, ICE officials would request an immigration hold, but then never show up to pick up the prisoner.
Cooke and Atkins cited a 2012 case where a U.S. District Court judge found that Clackamas County, Ore., violated a woman’s rights by holding her in jail on behalf of immigration agents, even after her local case was resolved.
Federal appellate court judges have ruled against such ICE detainers as well. Many jurisdictions, while not necessarily declaring themselves sanctuary cities, have since started declining such requests from federal immigration agents.
Word otherwise about the county’s immigration law stance reportedly had been circulating, according to Cooke, who said the sheriff’s office gets regular inquiries about whether Clark is in fact a sanctuary county.
The Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan and nonprofit immigration policy research organization, has the county listed as a sanctuary county in an online map last updated in mid-December.
There’s no single definition of what constitutes a sanctuary city or county; how much an agency or jurisdiction declines or agrees to cooperate with federal officials may vary.
Other counties have grumbled about the imprecise labeling as well, Cooke said.
Rather than fuss over terms — and with the inquiries and continued national political conversation over sanctuary cities — Cooke said the sheriff’s office thought now was a good time to clarify its policies. President Trump this week ordered the building of a wall along the Mexican border in order to stop illegal immigration. Trump’s order was fraught with political controversy.
“We don’t deal within the fog of the political process, we deal with the reality of what statutes tell us that we need to do and what courts tell us we need to do,” Cooke said.
Atkins, a Republican, said the sheriff’s office will continue to jail or transfer custody of anyone in the country unlawfully when federal officials present legally sufficient documentation.
Cooke added the sheriff’s office recognizes there are many Latino families in the county, who live, work and go to school here like anyone else, and that the sheriff’s office strives to treat everyone respectfully and justly.
“We just concentrate on what we need to do as a law enforcement agency, and we try to do it with compassion and the understanding that we’re dealing with human beings,” he said.
