ICE picks up man at Orange County jail. His fiancée, supporters will speak out Friday

A group of pastors and Orange County residents will join the fiancée of an ICE detainee Friday to call out Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood on his department’s immigration policies.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers took Jocsan Cornejo Cornejo, a 30-year-old father of five, into federal custody July 18 at the Orange County jail. According to a Sheriff’s Office news release, ICE agents were alerted to Cornejo’s arrest June 23 when his fingerprints were submitted to a national database.

The Sheriff’s Office reported Thursday that Cornejo was charged with several misdemeanors, including driving while impaired, speeding, assault on a female, assault on a child under 12, and battery of an unborn child. He was jailed under $25,000 secured bail.

Cornejo’s fiancée Maria Fabiola Huerta, 39, pregnant and with two young children, is expected to speak at Friday’s news conference.

Domestic violence call

According to an incident report, Orange County deputies answered a domestic violence call June 23 at a Hillsborough home. Huerta’s daughter, interpreting for her mother, told deputies that Huerta and Cornejo had gone out, and when they returned home, started arguing about his drinking, the report states.

Cornejo grabbed her under the chin, Huerta told deputies, and punched her in the stomach. She pushed him away, the report stated, and Cornejo tried to leave with the children, grabbing his daughter by the hair. He left in a gray sport-utility vehicle, the report stated.

Another deputy saw the SUV head south on Interstate 85. The driver was going 80 mph in a 70 mph zone when he pulled him over, the deputy reported. He suspected the driver, later identified as Cornejo, had been drinking, he said. Cornejo admitted to drinking several shots of tequila and beer over the last several hours, the deputy reported.

Cornejo said he got into an argument with his girlfriend, who got up in his face, the report stated, and Cornejo said he pushed her and she slapped him. The deputies reported arresting Cornejo and giving him two breath tests. Cornejo’s blood alcohol content was 0.12 — over the state’s legal limit of 0.08, they reported.

On June 23, the Sheriff’s Office received an ICE detainer request from California for Cornejo, and the ICE office in Cary followed up with a second 24- to 48-hour detainer on June 25, the Sheriff’s Office reported. Cornejo was still in jail when ICE agents arrived, because no one had posted his bail, the report stated.

Records show Cornejo is scheduled to appear Aug. 18 in an Orange County court on the DWI and traffic charges.

Orange County ICE policy

News conference organizers Siembra NC and Apoyo, both Triangle area Latinx organizations, offered a different version of Cornejo’s detention in a news release Thursday. Cornejo, who lacks legal immigration status, is a native of Mexico.

The release said Cornejo’s bail had been reduced from secured to unsecured the day he was taken into ICE custody, which would have allowed him to be released after signing a promise to appear in court.

Siembra NC and Apoyo called Cornejo’s release to ICE officers “double-speak” by Blackwood. The sheriff has said his department does not honor ICE detainers for inmates who post bail or serve their time and are released.

The groups are calling on Blackwood to stop alerting ICE to inmates wanted on immigration violations and to require a criminal warrant signed by a judge before releasing an inmate into ICE custody.

Sheriffs in Guilford, Durham, Forsyth, Mecklenburg, Buncombe and other counties have a “judicial warrant policy,” the groups said. They noted Cornejo does not have a criminal record or a deportation order.

“It looks very much like Sheriff Blackwood has an ‘open door policy’ with ICE, rather than the ‘show me a judicial warrant’ policy on the books in neighboring counties,” said Juan Miranda with Siembra NC.

The group wants Blackwood to “give a full accounting” of how Cornejo ended up in ICE custody, said Rubí Franco Quiroz of Chapel Hill and the group Apoyo.

“An agency breaking apart families doesn’t deserve any courtesy from our elected officials,” Quiroz said.

ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said Friday there is no “judicial criminal warrant” for immigration violations. What ICE sends is an administrative warrant, or detainer. A criminal warrant only is issued for someone charged with a crime.

“Quite literally, what they are asking for cannot be done. It does not exist,” he said. “By wanting groups to supply a form that cannot be provided, what they are in essence saying is that under no circumstances should local law enforcement transfer people into ICE custody, even in situations where they are admitted violent criminals.”

When ICE arrived

The Sheriff’s Office offered a slightly different version of events Thursday, noting that ICE showed up at 3:10 p.m. July 18, before Cornejo’s bond hearing, and took him into custody at 3:36 p.m. The District Court judge’s order reducing Cornejo’s bond to unsecured was stamped at 4:06 p.m., the Sheriff’s Office reported.

Cornejo was not the only inmate ICE officers had planned to pick up that day, Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Jamison Sykes said, but he was the only one still in jail when ICE arrived. When an ICE officer called earlier to verbally renew Cornejo’s detainer, he was told the jail would not hold Cornejo if he became eligible for release, the Sheriff’s Office reported.

Cornejo is now being held at Stewart Detention Center in Georgia. Siembra NC and Apoyo said Thursday that his detainment leaves his family without a steady income.

Blackwood noted in Thursday’s release that being in the United States without legal immigration status is a civil violation of federal law.

“We keep individuals in our detention center when we are required to do so by the law,” Blackwood said. “Keeping someone incarcerated because another agency, in this case DHS, requests us to do so does not give us legal authority to hold them.”

The Sheriff’s Office cooperates with ICE officers by sharing publicly available information, he added.

“Violating a person’s constitutional rights is not something we do,” Blackwood said. “A detainer request is not an order issued by a federal judicial officer; it is merely a request which can be honored or not at the discretion of a sheriff. As a matter of policy, our agency does not honor detainer requests.”

Blackwood is an executive board member of the N.C. Sheriff’s Association, which recently came out in support of House bill 370. The bill’s latest version would require sheriffs to find out the immigration status of someone arrested for any crime, including misdemeanors. If a detainer is issued, a judge’s order would require the department to hold that person for at least 48 hours or until ICE picks them up or rescinds the detainer.

Blackwood said Friday he supported the Sheriff’s Association stance, because the organization represents all 100 counties in North Carolina.

“My county is unique, and we police differently here, and we have different philosophies for the way we do most everything we do,” Blackwood said, “but the association’s stance has to be united in order for us to make headway with legislators, who are trying to draft poorly written, not really well thought out, legislative initiatives.”