Sheriff’s office won’t answer questions about costs related to ICE agreement

Many questions remain about the recently signed agreement between the Portage County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that empowers deputies to enforce federal immigration law.

Among them: Does it give the sheriff’s office more arrest powers? And who has to pay if the sheriff’s office is acting on behalf of ICE?

The ICE agreement clearly states that the sheriff’s office would bear most of the cost of its ICE-related activities. Sheriff’s office Finance Director Ron Rost declined comment as to how the office would meet those potential expenses, as well as anything else about the agreement.

County Commissioner Sabrina Christian-Bennett said the sheriff must stay within the constraints of his $22.41 million budget.

“Certain lines like salary lines, training and the jail, once he’s set those, they can’t be moved,” she said. “As far as overtime and stuff, he would have to stay within his budget. It would be interesting to see how many ICE detainees we have coming through Portage County.”

She and Commissioner Mike Tinlin said it is hypothetical to say how the commissioners may respond should Portage County Sheriff Bruce D. Zuchowski request more funds to support federal immigration enforcement.

“We honestly don’t have a lot of extra money right now,” she said.

A revenue source that may at least offset the cost of housing undocumented immigrants is a contract county commissioners approved earlier this month with the U.S. Marshals Service. For $100 a day, federal inmates will be housed at the Portage County Jail. The contract is now working its way through the federal bureaucracy.

Jail Administrator Bryan Morgenstern did not respond to repeated inquiries as to how much it actually costs to house an inmate, federal or otherwise.

What the ICE agreement allows

The Memorandum of Agreement, which Zuchowski signed on March 11 and ICE’s acting director signed March 17, authorizes the sheriff’s office to:

• Interrogate “any person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or remain in the United States”
• Arrest a person without a warrant if the officer witnesses them entering the U.S. unlawfully or “has reason to believe” the person is in the U.S. illegally “and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained”
• Arrest a person without a warrant for felonies if “the officer has reason to believe the alien to be arrested is in the United States in violation of the law and is likely to escape before a warrant is obtained”
• Maintain custody of people on behalf of ICE
• The MOA requires the sheriff’s office to proffer local or state charges against those it arrests. The people are to be held locally until their sentences have been served, after which time the sheriff’s office is to notify ICE for same-day removal to a “relevant ICE detention office or facility.”

Should there be no local or state charges, the MOA allows the sheriff’s office to “process” people and have ICE determine, on a case-by-case basis, how to handle them. “Special interests or other circumstances” may apply.

Just how much this agreement changes standard procedure for local police is up for debate.

Local police do not need special agreements with ICE to detain or turn over undocumented immigrants, interim Ravenna Police Chief Jake Smallfield told The Portager. He stated that when Ravenna police encounter an undocumented immigrant, they simply pick up the phone.

“We have a direct line to ICE, and we give them the person’s information,” he said. “They tell us if they want us to detain them and hold them until they get here to take custody. If they do not, we typically release them.”

Ravenna police have had occasion to contact ICE and received directives to release them and wait for further federal contact, Smallfield said.

The difference, said Kent Police Chief Nicholas Shearer, is that the MOA appears to give the sheriff’s office authority to question, arrest and detain people suspected of being undocumented immigrants before contacting federal officials. Without authorization from the federal government, Kent police do not have jurisdiction to enforce immigration: They cannot directly arrest or detain a person simply under suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant, he said.

“These are very different times right now. There have been so many changes at the federal level and how they handle things,” Shearer said. “I don’t even know if they’re always that keenly aware of how it’s going to be handled. So to give you the specifics of how we would be asked to handle that by the feds, I guess my answer is, I really don’t know.”

Should Kent police be unable to identify a person they are trying to arrest, their first call would be to the FBI for assistance in what Shearer termed “the identification process.” If the FBI would determine that the person is in the U.S. illegally and should be detained, and would request local support while they attempt to apprehend the person, Kent police would comply, he said.

Since ICE generally doesn’t ask for the assistance of local police, Shearer said Kent police likely wouldn’t even know if the agency was operating in Kent.

Kent police have no intention of signing an agreement like the one the sheriff’s office signed with ICE, he said.

“I believe it’s a federal responsibility,” he said.

Sheriff could face lawsuits

Both Tinlin and Christian-Bennett declined to comment as to what to tell members of the county’s international community who may be concerned about the sheriff’s new authority.

“We won’t know until we cross that bridge and see if there’s any issues,” Christian-Bennett said.

Farhad Sethna, an Akron-area immigration attorney and University of Akron adjunct professor, believes the international community has good reason for concern. He told The Portager that he recently learned one of the Kent State University students whose visa had been revoked was due to an unpaid parking ticket.

“This is shocking and absolutely unconscionable. Basically deportation because of an unpaid parking ticket,” he said.

The federal government is now in the process of reversing student visa revocations. The visas of all 10 affected KSU students have been restored, and despite ICE’s statement that future revocations are possible, the students are safe for now.

Unless there is solid proof that a person is in the country illegally, sheriff’s deputies may well find themselves defending their actions in court, Akron-area criminal defense attorney Ron Spears said.

“If we do these things, and they go wrong, the county would find itself in the position of having to defend itself against the mistakes, whether they were reckless, negligent, purposeful, whatever else. What if the time it takes you to confirm or disprove goes long and a guy loses his job? You don’t think that guy’s going to have a problem with that?” he asked.

Spears also wondered about the wisdom of handing additional power to a single entity.

“I think that throughout our history, we have seen that when given boundless authority, that as humans, sometimes I think we are subject to maybe cast too broad a net,” he said. “I’m always concerned about that. Those things are in our lives, in everyday day lives, let alone in issues like this.”