New state law ends Frederick County's immigrant detention agreement with ICE

Dec. 11—The Frederick County Adult Detention Center is among the jails that will be prohibited under a new state law from housing detainees who await federal immigration hearings.

State lawmakers voted this week, during a special session that ended Thursday, to override Gov. Larry Hogan's veto of a bill prohibiting the state and local jurisdictions from entering into or renewing immigration detention agreements.

Lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled General Assembly passed the bill at the end of the last legislative session, but Hogan (R) vetoed it, saying in a letter that prohibiting local governments from entering such agreements would "make Maryland a sanctuary state."

"Unfortunately, in America we have a history of conflating criminals with immigrants," Del. Vaughn Stewart (D-Montgomery) said from the House of Delegates floor Tuesday. "But fortunately, the bill that you have today says something really, really simple. It says that every Marylander should be treated with dignity."

Stewart, who sponsored the bill, said it would allow immigrants arrested for not having proper documents to return to their homes and be monitored with an ankle bracelet, rather than be detained.

"There is no reason to detain people who have been in this country — many times — for years and years who have no violent offense, who often times have no, even, traffic offense," Stewart said.

Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins said the change will not impact operations at the local detention center, which has detained immigrants since 2008 under an Inter-Governmental Service Agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Detention and Removal.

The detention center, which Jenkins' office oversees, ceased detaining individuals awaiting an immigration hearing in March 2020 to lessen risk of COVID transmission within the facility. With no immigrants detained under the agreement, Jenkins said, the county hasn't received reimbursement from ICE since before the pandemic.

Prior to the pandemic, the detention center housed around 55 detainees awaiting an immigration hearing. The sheriff said this was the number of immigrants his jail could detain before reaching the facility's bed limit at the time.

When beds were filled, ICE would reimburse the county $83 per day per detainee, more than the amount necessary to house them in the jail, according to a 2018 internal audit. The agreement allowed for costs directly associated with housing detainees to factor into the reimbursement rate, as well as other costs approved by ICE, the audit states.

Because the detention center relied on availability among its more than 400 beds and existing staff to accommodate immigrants detained through the agreement, the only expenses incurred — and reimbursed — were food for the additional inmates and minimal medical costs.

These costs, and other expenses the county's Audit Division determined ICE would allow, amounted to $53.25 per inmate per day in 2017, according to the audit. The audit didn't make clear what happened to excess reimbursement funding from ICE, and county budget personnel were unavailable for comment Friday.

Jenkins said he supported the county's involvement in the Inter-Governmental Service Agreement because of his support for ICE, the federal law enforcement agency whose stated mission is to crack down on illegal immigration and crimes committed by immigrants living in the country illegally.

"A part of that ability to go after criminals and arrest and deport those criminals is to have available bed space to house these people while they're in the process of deportation — so they need bed space all over the country," Jenkins said. "To me it was more about the mission than the money."

A petition from ACLU Maryland, however, said immigration detention centers are "part of a system of oppression," and that collaborations between ICE and local police have encouraged racial profiling and the unjust detention of Black people, indigenous people and immigrants of color.

The petition, which the RISE Coalition of Western Maryland endorsed on its Facebook page Tuesday, called on Marylanders to contact their legislators in support of the Dignity Not Detention veto override.

Republican state lawmakers, including those who represent Frederick County, largely opposed overriding Hogan's veto earlier this week.

"The comments to say that we're somehow in Frederick profiting off of [detained immigrants] ... that's a falsity," Del. Dan Cox (R-Frederick) said from the House floor Tuesday. "The real issue here is that there's a massive influx of trafficking of persons across our border, and this bill was vetoed to stop that."

Some state lawmakers during the legislature's special session mistook the act as a prohibition against the 287(g) program, which allows police to check the immigration status of detainees and begin deportation proceedings, if necessary.

The Maryland Attorney General's Office, however, found the Dignity Not Detention Act wouldn't impact new or existing 287(g) agreements, according to a letter from February, meaning Frederick will remain among three counties in Maryland that participate in the program. So the Dignity Not Detention Act won't completely sever the sheriff's office's ties with ICE.

The new law requires existing immigrant detention agreements be terminated by Oct. 1, 2022. Jenkins said he wouldn't be surprised if no more immigrant detainees are housed in the county's detention center before then, especially given the risk of COVID transmission in the facility.

Follow Jack Hogan on Twitter: @jckhogan