Hundreds of local jurisdictions have passed policies limiting their cooperation with ICE and refusing detainer requests for undocumented immigrants. These policies resulted from a variety of concerns, including how ICE’s influence can be a hindrance to trust between local law enforcement and their communities.

While the Orange County Sheriff’s Office does not honor ICE detainers, some local advocacy groups still say that is not enough.

Detainers instruct federal, state, or local law enforcement agencies to hold individuals for up to 48 business hours beyond the time they otherwise would have been released. These detainers are strictly requests made by ICE and compliance is voluntary.

A law enforcement agency has the discretion to decide which detainers to honor and under what circumstances. In order to issue a detainer, ICE is supposed to have probable cause that an individual is deportable.

But when ICE can walk freely into Orange County Jail, some community advocates say these agents take advantage of that freedom and wrongly deport individuals and separate families due to minor crimes like driving without a license.

Reyna is one of those community advocates and an undocumented community member. She is also one of the driving forces and organizers of Siembra NC – an organization of Latinx people defending rights and ‘building power with papers and without papers.’

Siembra is a part of the Close the Loopholes Coalition, a team of faith, civic and immigrant groups from across Orange County united to stopping unnecessary ICE detentions in the county jail. Siembra and the Close the Loophole Coalition are hoping to limit the presence of ICE in the community and erase the fear that comes with it.

Kelly Morales, another leader of Siembra NC, helped translate Reyna’s interview on her behalf. Reyna says making a few small changes to the Sheriff’s ICE detainer policy can have a big impact.

“A lot of our community members are scared to drive, scared to take their children to school or go to the grocery store,” Reyna says. “With that fear that if at any point they are arrested for driving, they might be interacting with ICE in the jail.”

Reyna says the grand majority of her community is impacted by ICE whether it be because they come from mix-status families or because they themselves are directly at risk. To her, keeping ICE out of local prisons could mean a better relationship between the immigrant community and law enforcement.

“For our community, this could mean being able to have peace and trust in the police department and in the Sheriff’s [Office],” Reyna says. “Being able to know that the corroboration is not there, and is not in the books, and so this could mean being able to feel safe.”

While Sheriff Blackwood does not honor ICE detainers, Siembra claims his policy has been allowing ICE into the jail whenever they want – a loophole Reyna and Morales say could be closed by updating the detention center’s manual.

They are asking Sheriff Blackwood to fix these loopholes so that ICE is not allowed to enter the detention center in Orange County without a criminal warrant.

Morales says the changes they are asking for are really pretty minimal in the grand scheme – just clarification of policy and putting Sheriff Blackwood’s stances into writing.

“We know that Sheriff Blackwood has expressed his support on multiple occasions and we’re super appreciative of that,” Morales says. “But we do need to see it in writing and we need to be able to show our community and our family members that Sheriff Blackwood does back us up and is concerned about our safety. It’s just kind of asking the formality of being able to put these procedures in writing so that we can really know and tell our community that we are safe under his administration.”

Wednesday morning, the coalition gathered outside the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to demonstrate and formally unveil a public petition asking the sheriff to adopt stronger ICE jail access policies.

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office says it was not informed of the gathering until the morning of. Sheriff Blackwood was out of town with a prior commitment.

(Photo courtesy of Siembra NC)