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Latino community leaders and immigration attorneys say 287(g) agreements erode trust in law enforcement within immigrant communities. They are still waiting for President Joe Biden to keep a campaign promise to end the agreements, which 146 sheriffs nationally maintain.<\/p>\n
Among them are three Oklahoma sheriff departments \u2014 Canadian, Okmulgee and Tulsa counties.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Multiple calls to the Okmulgee County Sheriff\u2019s office were not returned. Unsuccessful efforts to seek comment from the Canadian County Sheriff\u2019s office included multiple phone calls and an in-person visit.<\/span><\/p>\n Until late 2020, Tulsa County Sheriff\u2019s office was also engaged in a beds-for-dollars contract with ICE to hold people in federal custody. Coupled with 287(g), the agreements allowed Tulsa County to identify someone undocumented, flag them for ICE and hold them in federal custody until they faced immigration court.<\/p>\n Vic Regalado, the son of Mexican immigrants and Tulsa County\u2019s sheriff since 2016, said Biden\u2019s policies on immigration enforcement have caused him to revise his ICE agreements.<\/p>\n With fewer people flagged for possible deportation, allocating beds at the Tulsa County jail for ICE detainees was less economically feasible, Regalado said. Individuals held in the jail for ICE are now transferred upon entering federal custody.<\/p>\n Regalado said that while it\u2019s true fewer people are being flagged, held and deported, the Biden administration\u2019s latest\u00a0immigration enforcement guidelines<\/a>\u00a0have also led to more serious criminals being released on bail in recent years.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the past, we had detention officers that had been trained through ICE to be able to access their (computer) programs and determine whether an individual was here illegally or not,\u201d Regalado said.<\/p>\n The jail now must wait for ICE officials in Washington, D.C., to decide whether they will assume custody, he said. Regalado gave an example of Tulsa County sheriffs\u2019 2021 arrest of a drug runner who shot at an officer and missed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe brought him to the jail for shooting with intent to kill, drug trafficking, and some other civil charges,\u201d Regalado said, \u201cHe bonded out, and within three hours he disappeared. Who knows where he is now.\u201d<\/p>\n After his 2016 election, Regalado faced criticism for continuing the 287(g) agreement.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMisinformation surrounded this program like I\u2019ve never seen any other program surrounded before,\u201d Regalado said. \u201cWe had individuals who were publicly telling people that we were holding individuals here who had simply run a stop sign or had a traffic warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n The Tulsa County Sheriff\u2019s Office has never enabled the deportation of someone who wasn\u2019t already requested by ICE or charged with serious crimes, Regalado said.<\/p>\n Pressure from immigrant advocates prompted him to compile a roster of Tulsa County jail detainees held under 287(g) showing the reason they were arrested.\u00a0<\/p>\n That data shows that between March 2019 and December 2021, 70 people were flagged by one of the six designated immigration officers and detained. None have been flagged in 2022.<\/p>\n A March 1 spot check of Tulsa County jail\u2019s roster showed 58 people with an \u201cICE hold\u201d designation. Regalado said those are people facing local charges who have been flagged by ICE. They will be released on bail or after they face the local judicial system unless ICE decides to assume custody of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a request (from ICE) to say, \u2018Hey call us before release in the event we want to process them,\u201d he said, explaining that once someone is transferred into federal custody, Tulsa County loses track of the person. They are taken to a federal \u2014 usually privately owned \u2014 detention facility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Once someone is released from a local jail to ICE, they become hard to track, said Susan Long, director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse research center at Syracuse. Those detainees tend to be mixed with immigration detainees from different parts of the country.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This makes for discrepancies between people flagged in jails like Tulsa\u2019s and the number of detainees ICE reports in a facility located nearby.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a really messy situation,\u201d Long said, \u201cand local police are sort of caught in the middle. They\u2019re responsible for the public safety of the community, and if you\u2019ve got a large immigrant community, it\u2019s often mixed in legal status.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Chris Shoaf, a Tulsa resident and member of the End 287(g) Coalition, has been tracking ICE hold designations at the Tulsa County jail since he learned about 287(g) contracts in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n His 2020 data shows that of the 329 people on ICE hold at David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center, half of them were charged with nonviolent crimes. Of those, 70% were charged with driving under the influence.<\/p>\n \u201cI think I could give a compelling argument why multiple DUIs is something you shouldn\u2019t be doing if you\u2019re here in this country illegally,\u201d Regalado said. \u201cBut what\u2019s never reported is that we let multiple people go because they were brought in for things like traffic violations. That narrative never gets pushed out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Shoaf said his data shows fewer people are being flagged and immediately transferred to federal custody. In 2021, 45 of 58 nonviolent immigration detainees faced charges of driving under the influence. Three had more than one offense.<\/p>\n Tulsa County has consistently been second to Oklahoma County for the most honored immigration detention requests \u2014 despite Oklahoma County\u2019s having no ICE agreements.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n