LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — Arkansas corrections officers can now perform some of the functions of ICE agents, after the state’s Department of Corrections entered into a memorandum of agreement with the federal agency last Friday.
The agreement allows authorized corrections officers to identify potential illegal immigrants in state custody and turn them over to ICE for deportation.
Act 654, passed this year by Arkansas’ legislature, mandates that the Division of Correction participate in the federal 287(g) program, which allows ICE to delegate authority to state and local law enforcement to perform immigration officer functions under the agency’s oversight.
The program has multiple models of varying scope—Act 654 compelled DOC to participate in the Warrant Service Officer model, which allows officers to execute warrants against inmates identified by ICE as potentially deportable.
But last week, DOC adopted the Jail Enforcement model.
“The Jail Enforcement model is a much more aggressive model… going all in on involving ICE,” said Nathan Bogart, an immigration attorney in Fayetteville.
The Jail Enforcement model gives selected corrections officers the power to interrogate any person in a detention facility who they believe to be a non-citizen—even if they haven’t been convicted for charges on which they are being held—and arrest and turn them over to ICE for deportation proceedings at the time of their scheduled release from criminal custody.
An immigrant advocacy group in Northwest Arkansas is concerned that the increased ICE activity in state detention centers will lead to even less accountability, especially considering recent reports of immigration enforcement mistakes.
“U.S. citizens are being detained as well. There was a man two or three days ago detained here in Northwest Arkansas for a minor traffic violation. And then the Benton County Department Sheriff’s Department decided to put an ICE hold on him. And then ICE got him and took him to their ICE office in Fayetteville. And then 30 minutes into that visit to the ICE office, I think an attorney interfered, and they ended up releasing the person,” said Irvin Camacho, co-founder of the Alliance for Immigrant Respect and Education (AIRE).
“But things like [that] are happening publicly… I worry what’s going to happen privately in the Department of Corrections with ICE involvement.”
Those issues aside, can often understaffed DOC facilities spare corrections officers to participate in hands-on immigration enforcement that the memo says they are to exercise during the course of their normal duties?
“There are serious questions as to whether or not this is distracting from the primary mission of a state agency like the Department of Corrections. They should be more focused on running the prisons than assisting in a federal operation,” Bogart told KATV.
Arkansas law enforcement agencies, specifically sheriff’s offices, are required at minimum by Act 654 to apply to ICE’s Warrant Service Officer program, but may participate in the Jail Enforcement model if they so choose.