NC North Carolina News

Rockingham County said it is the first county in North Carolina to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency with reporting jailed undocumented immigrants for possible deportation. 

"I tend to believe that when you identify a criminal offender in your community, and you remove that person from your community, whether it be illegal or not, you're making your community safer," Sheriff Sam Page told the North Carolina Public Radio for its March 23 report. "So I'm doing my part in another layer of crime prevention and safety, public safety for the citizens."

The county signed an agreement with ICE to help with deportations and is the first Sheriff's Office in the state to do so.

"After today, we will see more sheriff's offices across not only North Carolina, but across America," he said to North Carolina Public Radio. "This program has been underway for about three years in development, working with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, the National Sheriff's Association and also ICE officials and I'm proud to be able to push this program out."

Rockingham County Detention Center will assign 10 deputies to identify illegal immigrants in jail. These deputies will then report the undocumented immigrants to the federal government. 

Once ICE is notified of the undocumented immigrants, they have 48 hours to begin the deportation process. 

"In reality, they're serving ICE paperwork on the aliens, that telling them that there's a warrant of arrest for them or warrant removal and allowing ICE that limited time to come pick up these individuals that have been identified and take them into ICE custody," Executive Associate Director of Enforcement Removal Operations for ICE Henry Lucero said to North Carolina Public Radio. 

Rockingham County is the first in North Carolina to participate, but the 49th county in the nation to join. 

"No one wants criminal aliens that have been identified by ICE to be released back into the communities where they can potentially re-offend," Lucero said to North Carolina Public Radio. "This program and others like it help to prevent crimes from happening. Luckily this county is not a sanctuary jurisdiction like some counties in North Carolina, who do not work with ICE and choose to not work with ice and rather release criminals back into the communities."

But North Carolina-based immigrant rights' groups object to the partnership between ICE and the county. 

"We just see this as another form of trying to do ICE's work and again, serving to work for the Trump administration's agenda to deport people in our community to separate families," Citlaly Mora, member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of North Carolina, said to North Carolina Public Radio. "So I think that's our biggest concern that, you know, it's pretty clear to us what, what the intentions of this program are."

ACLU and Siembra NC, another immigrant rights' group, will monitor the partnership. 

"Our detention hotline regularly gets calls from people detained on ICE holds in Sam Page’s jail, and we have supported several families of people held for pickup by ICE after they had been declared free to go by local magistrates," Kelly Morales, member of Siembra NC, said in a statement. "This agreement will build on his current practice of violating the 4th Amendment rights of immigrants in Rockingham County. It won’t make anyone safer, if anything, it will undermine the already limited trust in local law enforcement."