The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota sent letters to every county sheriff in Minnesota on Wednesday urging them to stop holding immigration detainees for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Known as "ICE holds," the practice identifies prisoners in custody who may have an issue with immigration and allows the jail to hold prisoners for an additional 48 hours past when they might otherwise be released.
In its letter, the Minnesota ACLU said recent court decisions have established that the ICE holds are merely a request and not a command; and that sheriffs have no legal obligation to honor the request.
The organization also suggests that complying with the requests forces county taxpayers to incur unnecessary per diem costs for housing detainees who might otherwise be released.
"The growing spate of federal court decisions should serve as an important warning for local law enforcement throughout Minnesota," staff attorney Ian Bratlie said in a statement with the letter.
ICE holds add up
In its letter, the ACLU cited data from the Syracuse University-based TRAC program showing how widespread the practice is in Minnesota. Between October 2011 and August 2013, ICE issued more than 5,300 detainers to Minnesota jails. Almost every county jail in Minnesota was asked to hold prisoners past their release date, TRAC data show.
In data obtained through the state's Data Practices Act, the local ACLU found that Hennepin County, the state's most populous, spent more than $192,000 between 2010 and the end 2011 on keeping 1,272 ICE detainees. Blue Earth County in southeastern Minnesota spent more than $4,200 from September 2009 to September 2011 on 20 ICE detainees, according to the ACLU's review.
According to the TRAC data, 54 percent of immigration detainers in Minnesota are lodged against people with no criminal record and involve people who would typically be released from pretrial detention.