Pierce County Transfers Jail Inmates To ICE

TACOMA, WA - The Pierce County Jail contacts federal immigration officials to pick up undocumented people when they leave the jail, the sheriff's office has confirmed. These inmates have "detainer" requests for their arrest from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to county officials.

Advocates for immigrants rights say it's dangerous Pierce County would assist ICE. The practice is unique among the state's three biggest counties. King and Snohomish county jails do not contact ICE when an inmate with a detainer request is released, jail officials from those counties have told Patch.

Although Pierce County does not go too far out of its way, the jail does essentially transfer undocumented inmates to ICE.

"When we have an inmate that has an immigration detainer and is scheduled to be released, a notification is made to immigration," Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Det. Ed Troyer wrote in an email. "However we do not hold anyone beyond their scheduled release date and time based on the detainer. ICE has access to our facility, they keep track on individuals via on-line roster, which is available to the public. We do not take detainer only arrests."

ICE frequently sends detainer requests to jails around the country. Jurisdictions that ignore these requests are often a "sanctuary" for undocumented people.

Here's an example of how the Pierce County exchange works: Last year, a man named Deivi Jeovani Pedro Luna-Cruz was arrested in Pierce County on a domestic battery charge. He was sentenced to one year in the county jail. When he was released in mid-April, jail officials contacted ICE so they could meet Luna-Cruz as he was leaving the jail, according to federal court documents.

Luna-Cruz has been deported to Mexico four times over the past two decades and has 11 criminal convictions in multiple states, everything from drunk driving to domestic battery. He is now being held at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.

"The defendant came to the attention of ICE [in Puget Sound] on or about Feb. 8, 2017, after he was arrested and booked into the Pierce County Jail on January 14, 2017, for assault in the fourth-degree, domestic violence. An immigration detainer was lodged on the defendant, after it was determined that the defendant was a previously deported criminal alien.

"On April 4, 2018, the defendant was released from Pierce County Jail and turned over to ICE custody," ICE agent Robert Mason wrote in federal court documents.

But Pierce County's policy could funnel non-criminals to ICE. Tim Warden-Hertz, the directing attorney in Tacoma for the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project, said Pierce County's policy is a public safety threat because it erodes trust between police and undocumented people.

"I think these things contribute to how people in the community see police in Pierce County and Tacoma," Warden-Hertz said. "We've had cases where [an undocumented person] was a witness to a crime, and when police arrived, all of a sudden they're the ones getting arrested."

Studies of undocumented communities have shown that crime often goes unreported due to fear of immigration action. In a 2013 study by the University of Chicago, "70 percent of undocumented immigrants reported they are less likely to contact law enforcement authorities if they were victims of a crime."

Locally, there have been several cases where undocumented people have been arrested and given to ICE without a criminal conviction.

In February, Wilson Rodriguez Macarreno, 32, was turned over to ICE by Tukwila police after he called 911 to report a car prowler. Rodriguez Macarreno, a father of three who has been in the U.S. since 2004, was taken to the Northwest Detention Facility in Tacoma and now faces deportation to Honduras.

In February 2017, Armando Chavez Corona got into a minor accident along I-5 in Tacoma. A Washington State Patrol trooper noticed a detainer on Chavez Corona, and contacted ICE to come get him. He was taken to the detention facility in Tacoma for deportation.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said that ICE is prioritizing deportations of criminals - helping President Donald Trump execute promises he made during the 2016 campaign.

"Sanctuary cities release thousands of criminal aliens out of our prisons and jails and back into our communities. They go into those sanctuary cities when they see them; they go there because they feel they’re safe. And in many cases, they are very bad actors. We have gang members; we have predators, rapists, killers. A lot of bad people," Trump said in March.

The case of Luna-Cruz is an example of a convicted criminal being transferred to federal custody. But Warden-Hertz wondered what would happen if someone was taken to jail for a crime they didn't commit, only to be released into the custody of ICE.

"When local law enforcement is seen as doing immigration's job, it makes everyone in the community less safe," he said.

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