In announcing enforcement push, ICE reignites feud with Mecklenburg sheriff
The nearly 10-month-long feud between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden ignited again Thursday, as a senior ICE official blasted what he called McFadden’s “dangerous and reckless” policy of allowing undocumented immigrants charged with crimes to walk out of jail with no call to ICE.
McFadden fired back, saying he follows state law on the release of inmates. He criticized ICE for not inviting him to sit down and hash things out and said he’s being used as a “political pawn” for federal officials’ failure to solve the nation’s immigration problem.
President Donald Trump also weighed in on the dispute Thursday. He retweeted a tweet by the conservative Judicial Watch foundation that said: “Weeks after JW reported that the sheriff of North Carolina’s biggest county released numerous violent illegal immigrant criminals from custody, new federal stats reveal that the problem is statewide.”
“That, and many other reasons, is why Republicans will win North Carolina!” Trump tweeted.
Thursday’s news conference at the ICE office in Charlotte came at the end of the agency’s week-long national sweep aimed at counties like Mecklenburg, where local law enforcement agencies don’t cooperate with ICE by allowing ICE officers to take undocumented immigrants into custody from county jails.
During the sweep, which wrapped up Thursday, ICE agents in Charlotte went looking for 70 undocumented immigrants with criminal records, said Tim Robbins, executive associate director for ICE’s enforcement and removal operations. (Some 27 of those were immigrants whom ICE had sought to take into custody from the Mecklenburg County Jail with a detainer, but the jail refused, Robbins said.) ICE officers in Mecklenburg made 32 arrests this week, Robbins said.
“Those criminal aliens remain in your community where they are free to commit more crimes,” Robbins said, “all because the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office chose to knowingly and willingly release a criminal back into the community instead of calling ICE.”
He gave an example: An undocumented immigrant was arrested for driving while intoxicated, and ICE lodged a detainer but it was ignored. In June, the same immigrant was arrested again for other crimes, including assault on a female, assault with a deadly weapon and another DUI.
“Here in Mecklenburg, we can be in the jail (taking immigrants into custody) in a safe setting, or we can be in your community,” Robbins said. “We will continue to be in your communities more ... if we can’t get an individual in a jail, then we’re going to be knocking on doors in the community.”
Following his election in November, McFadden initiated a policy of refusing to honor immigration detainers — requests by the agency to hold an individual in jail until ICE officers can pick them up.
Before McFadden’s election, Mecklenburg County participated in the national 287(g) program, which is a voluntary agreement between ICE and a local sheriff’s office. It effectively allows some sheriff’s deputies to act as ICE agents inside county jails.
Abolishing 287(g) and refusing to cooperate when ICE asks him to detain an immigrant was one of his major campaign platforms, and one that he shared with many other sheriffs around the region.
In 2018, six of North Carolina’s seven most populous counties elected new African American Democratic sheriffs, many of whom campaigned on limiting their collaboration with ICE in order to increase trust among immigrant communities.
McFadden has pointed to appeals court rulings that say detainers violate the 4th Amendment. And he has said distancing himself from ICE improves trust among the county’s immigrant communities.
McFadden said Thursday that he wished Robbins would have sat down to talk to him “about how to fix that broken (federal immigration) system” during his visit, and bristled at Robbins’ accusation that McFadden’s policies were endangering county residents.
“I would have loved to talk to this gentleman today,” McFadden said at a news conference he held shortly after Robbins spoke to the press. “I’m willing to sit down and have a conversation with them.”
Robbins’ visit and his message “tells me, ‘You do not respect me.’ Come and talk to me.”
Robbins and ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said ICE officials have sat down with McFadden in the past.
McFadden pushed back against ICE’s claims Thursday with a couple of arguments he’s made in the past: that ICE should come to him with criminal warrants for immigrants’ arrests, and the idea that immigrants who have committed crimes would not answer for those crimes in the U.S. if they are deported.
But ICE officials disputed both of those arguments, saying that ICE charges are administrative, not criminal, and that immigrants who commit crimes are indeed prosecuted in the U.S. before they are deported.
Both sides on Thursday accused the other of playing politics.
“I don’t understand how politics and electability comes in front of public safety, and it bothers me,” Robbins said.
Said McFadden, less than two hours later: “They’re making me out to be a political pawn.”
This story was originally published September 26, 2019 at 5:39 PM with the headline "In announcing enforcement push, ICE reignites feud with Mecklenburg sheriff."