The San Miguel Basin Forum sometimes participates in statewide programs with other newsrooms in Colorado. Recently, it was asked by CoLab representatives to work on ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, coverage, specifically communicating with local law enforcement agencies to learn about their practices. The Forum reached out April 25 to San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters with four questions generated by the states' CoLab organization:
1) “What is your policy with inmates who have immigration enforcement action pending?”
Masters said that’s determined by state statute.
“ … The state law dictates what the procedure is, regarding people with immigration issues,” he said. “If someone’s in our custody we arrested, or the marshal did, they’re in our jail. … If they’re an immigrant, or not a U.S. citizen, we write them into the computer, and the computer tells ICE this person is in our custody — and tells us if the person is wanted by ICE.”
Masters added if an inmate is wanted on a civil detainer, not a criminal or arrest warrant, ICE notifies the sheriff’s office and requests a hold on that person, so they can send an agent. Only, Masters said a civil detainer is not an arrest warrant. And, the truth is that the U.S. Constitution states that a person cannot be held or arrested, unless there’s a warrant signed by a judge. In short, law enforcement can’t hold anyone based on a civil detainer.
Masters said when someone is released from jail, or bonds out, law enforcement has to release that person in a timely manner, usually in two hours. He said if ICE doesn’t show, that person is allowed to go.
“We don’t hold for a minute longer than that,” he said.
Moreover, in his history — 45 years as sheriff and 50 years of peacekeeping — in dealing with ICE, those whom agents come to pick up are the ones who’ve committed crimes, those with lengthy arrest records, or those who’ve been deported multiple times, not necessarily those who entered illegally.
What’s more is that the ICE agent — there’s only one now, but there used to be two — lives in Durango and covers multiple counties.
“The feeling that ICE is everywhere, is out taking people in Western Colorado, in my experience, it’s just not true,” Masters said. “They don’t have the people to do it.”
He also said there could be more ICE agents in the future, but so far that’s not the case.
2) If ICE requests a hold, will you keep an inmate in your jail beyond the time at which their sentence would have expired to give ICE time to pick them up?
“The law says you’re not supposed to do that. It doesn’t matter what our policy is,” Masters told the Forum. “We are supposed to release. … The main thing is that it’s not our decision. It’s not a sheriff decision to hold onto someone. The court tells us when to release, and the law says to release in a reasonable time.”
3) Do you ask every arrestee about their immigration status at the time of arrest or booking?
“No. We do ask them where they were born, their nationality,” he said. “We ask that of everyone who walks into the jail.”
Masters said they ask the standard “identifiers”: address, height, weight, eye color, age, date of birth, place of birth — all standard.
“We don’t ask ‘Are you here illegally, or legally?’”
Though, he said sometimes someone willingly will produce a green card to show law enforcement.
4) Do you notify ICE anytime a foreign-born inmate is booked into jail?
Again, Masters said the software reports that information in the booking process. He said if someone is booked on a Friday and has immigration issues, it might be Monday or later until ICE even gets in contact with the jail.
“It’s just not a terribly efficient process,” he said, “and it’s getting worse as far as efficiency goes.”
Masters said all of the sheriffs he knows follow the law in the same way he does.
“We cannot hold onto anybody without an order signed by a judge,” he said.
He said no law enforcement — highway patrol, the marshal’s department, sheriff’s deputies — can arrest anyone without an affidavit reviewed and signed by a judge.
“The laws in Colorado and the nation are very clear,” he said.
