‘Not my fault’? On ICE detainers, Sheriff McFadden might be right | Opinion
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden has earned a reputation for treating problems in his office as somebody else’s fault. When his department stumbles, his instinct is often to point outward.
On Monday, lawmakers repeatedly heckled McFadden with the nickname “Not My Fault” after what sounded like evasive, obfuscating answers.
But on one politically charged issue raised at that hearing, at least, McFadden might just be right.
One of the most eye-popping statistics presented at Monday’s hearing revolved around ICE detainers. This is when the Immigrations and Custom Enforcement officers indicate that they’d like to pick up a jail inmate who’s in the country illegally.
State laws passed in 2023 and 2025 require sheriffs to honor these detainers and hold these inmates for up to 48 hours to allow ICE agents to come get them. Data presented at the hearing shows that there’s a big difference in the pickup rate between counties.
The Wake County Sheriff’s Office received 441 detainer requests and 288 pickups last year, a 65% pickup rate, according to data presented.
In Mecklenburg County, though, the sheriff’s office received 445 detainer requests, but only 72 of the offenders were actually picked up by ICE. That is about 16%.
That’s quite a disparity, and McFadden had no real answer for it at the hearing when pressed.
“I can’t speak to ICE, why they didn’t or did not pick up someone,” he told the House panel. “Simply making it seem like I’m doing something wrong or fudging the numbers is not true.”
Given McFadden’s long-standing opposition to cooperating with immigration enforcement, it’s reasonable to wonder whether there’s some sort of policy in place trying to circumvent state law. I dug into this question, and as it turns out — this actually might not be McFadden’s fault.
ICE detainers
Looking at statewide national data, Wake County is the one that seems to be the outlier, not Mecklenburg.
While long-term data can be hard to come by, early results showed that only 12% of ICE detainers across North Carolina resulted in the inmate being picked up. That was the same rate as Texas, and Georgia was only at 16%, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Nationwide, the rate was only 14%.
Much of that has to do with bed space. The number of total detainees has skyrocketed under the Trump administration, but now ICE is virtually out of room. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act has increased funding for detention facilities, but all that takes time to build.
As it turns out, the only ICE detention facility in North Carolina is in Cary, the Wake County suburb. That makes it a short drive to the Wake County jail, and quite a longer one to get to uptown Charlotte.
I reached out to Wake County Sheriff Willie Rowe for his perspective, but didn’t hear back. So I called up Eddie Caldwell, executive vice president and general counsel of the N.C. Sheriffs’ Association. His organization represents all 100 sheriffs across the state.
Why would the pick-up numbers be so different between two counties if everything was on the up-and-up?
“I don’t have a definitive answer to that,” he told me. But he did point out that while Mecklenburg County did not believe they had the legal authority to turn over inmates to ICE prior to the Oct. 1, 2025 effective date of House Bill 318, it is his understanding that they are doing so now and that McFadden met with ICE officials last fall and implemented procedures for safely transferring inmates to federal custody.
“MCSO was a little late to the dance,” Caldwell said. “But to Sheriff McFadden’s credit, they are there now.”
What needs fixing
The House oversight committee, led by Columbus County Rep. Brenden Jones, has already sent a follow-up letter to the sheriff’s office requesting more documents outlining its policies around ICE detainers and communications with federal authorities.
That’s worth having. It’s entirely possible that the effort will turn up evidence of things that need fixing at the sheriff’s office.
But what I see here is more of a federal problem that the state can help address.
Jails are inarguably the best place for ICE to pick up illegal aliens. It’s a controlled environment, and you’re targeting people who have already been picked up for other crimes. Instead of seeing Border Patrol hassling people in Home Depot parking lots, it would be immeasurably better to build up the capacity to pick up people with these detainers. Right now, ICE simply doesn’t have the capacity to do that.
While the federal government bears most of the responsibility to fix this system, this doesn’t mean the state is powerless.
The General Assembly could start by overriding Gov. Josh Stein’s veto of the North Carolina Border Protection Act. This would go a step further and require local law enforcement to have a 287(g) partnership with ICE.
Under 287(g) “jail enforcement model” partnerships, sheriff’s offices gain more tools to determine if an inmate is in the country illegally even if they don’t show up with an active detainer. Currently, only four sheriff’s offices in North Carolina (Cabarrus, Gaston, Henderson and Person counties) have these agreements in place, according to ICE records. The Senate has already overridden the veto, but the House has yet to take a vote on it.
The state could also give county jails more money to house ICE detainees. States like Florida that have invested in detention capacity have a far higher rate of detainers resulting in pickup. North Carolina simply doesn’t have that. Even Alamance County, where the sheriff is pretty gung ho on immigration enforcement, has stopped accepting detainees due to lack of space.
Far be it from me to defend Sheriff McFadden. He’s made plenty of mistakes he should own up to.
But I care about good policy a lot more than I care about dunking on people. As far as I can tell, this one really isn’t his fault.
Contributing columnist Andrew Dunn is the publisher of the Longleaf Politics newsletter, which offers thoughtful analysis of North Carolina politics and policy from a conservative perspective. He can be reached at andrew@longleafpol.com.
This story was originally published February 12, 2026 at 9:41 AM with the headline "‘Not my fault’? On ICE detainers, Sheriff McFadden might be right | Opinion."