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New program would allow local jail staff to serve immigration warrants in the jail

The Freeborn County Sheriff’s Office has applied for an addendum to its U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agreement that will allow staff in the Freeborn County jail to serve ICE immigration warrants as requested by the federal government to local inmates brought into the jail under separate criminal charges.

Sheriff Ryan Shea said the ICE Warrant Service Officer Program would only be utilized in the jail by a handful of detention staff and would not be used by licensed local law enforcement out in the community.

Shea said the program would eliminate someone from ICE having to come down to Freeborn County to deliver an immigration-related warrant to an inmate in the county.

“We won’t be going and picking people up on ICE warrants,” the sheriff said. “It’s just a paperwork type of a thing for in the detention center.”

According to the ICE website, the Warrant Service Officer program allows ICE to train, certify and authorize state and local law enforcement officers to serve and execute administrative warrants on people living in the country illegally who are in their agency’s jail.

The program is part of the larger 287(g) Program, which President Donald Trump in January authorized to be used to the maximum extent permitted by law under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

There are two other models in the program, including the Task Force Model, which would allow local law enforcement to enforce limited immigration authority with ICE oversight during routine police duties.

Freeborn County is not signing on for the other two programs.

Currently in Minnesota, Cass, Crow Wing and Itasca counties have signed on for the Task Force Model, while Freeborn and Jackson counties are with the Warrant Service Officer Model. Jackson County has also signed on for the Jail Enforcement Model.

Freeborn County has had an agreement with ICE since 2009, and a majority of inmates currently found in the county’s jail are being held through ICE. Shea said there are usually between 30 and 35 local inmates, and right now some of those are being housed at other jails. He estimated about 65% of local inmates are still being held in the county.

Shea said he could not discuss what the county is getting paid for its contract but said last January he applied for an increase in the county’s per diem rates, which had not been changed since 2019. That process has taken over a year.

He said as of April 2, the government started paying the county its new per diem rate, though the contract has not been officially signed. He also negotiated a new transport rate, which had not been updated since the start of the contract.