"Minnehaha County Jail"
By: John Hult
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (South Dakota Searchlight) – It’s unknown how many immigrants have been held for removal in South Dakota since President Donald Trump took office in January promising mass deportations, but public jail rosters in the state show more than two dozen being held now.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told South Dakota Searchlight that arrest statistics will be updated soon. The most recent figures on its website are from December.
A high-profile ICE operation Tuesday in Madison resulted in the arrests of eight people accused of being in the country without legal permission. Before that, ICE was already using jails in South Dakota as waystations for immigration actions more often since Trump took office, according to Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead.
“They’re not only doing what’s been reported on in Madison,” he said. “They’re doing investigations around the clock, with other federal agencies.”
22 at Sioux Falls jail
As of Thursday morning, there were 22 people detained at the Sioux Falls jail with pending immigration issues, according to Milstead, who said the figure can change by the hour as inmates come and go.
About half of the current detainees with ICE holds came to the attention of immigration agents after being arrested on state-level criminal charges. The others arrived at the jail for removal actions alone, and Milstead said that activity has increased.
The jail holds federal inmates for both ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service, which oversees people accused of federal crimes, including those related to immigration. The feds pay the county $112 a day per federal inmate.
People targeted by ICE for removal who don’t have criminal charges can only be held at the jail in Sioux Falls for 72 hours before being transferred to an ICE detention facility, Milstead said.
Those facilities are themselves local jails, but Sioux Falls is not designated as a long-term detention facility for ICE.
Unlike inmates targeted for removal alone, inmates with ICE holds and criminal charges can stay in Sioux Falls until their case concludes. An inmate who comes in on an ICE hold and is later charged with a crime is transferred to the U.S. Marshals Service.
“If they’re Marshals prisoners, we’ve held them for years sometimes,” Milstead said.
Jails cooperate with ICE across South Dakota
Milstead’s jail has cooperated with ICE for more than a decade as part of the agency’s Secure Communities Program, under which participating local jails send booking fingerprints to both the FBI and ICE. The FBI uses the fingerprints to check for federal warrants and federal criminal charges. ICE checks for prior interactions with immigration agents.
The Minnehaha County Jail also sends the names of every foreign-born detainee to be cross-checked for legal status by ICE’s Criminal Alien Program.
The jail has agreed to step up its cooperation. Milstead recently signed a 287(g) agreement with ICE, which will require some of his deputies to take about eight hours of training, after which they’ll be able to serve ICE warrants for removal actions. There are several types of 287(g) agreements, all of which enable some measure of cross-deputization to allow local law enforcement to work on behalf of ICE.
Milstead and Hughes County Sheriff Patrick Callahan, in Pierre, both signed up for the warrant service program through 287(g) this spring. It won’t be a large change operationally in Sioux Falls, said Milstead, who expects to train around a dozen people.
Inmates brought to the jail by ICE on removal proceedings have already been served removal warrants by ICE agents.
Those who come to jail on criminal charges and are later alleged to be in the country illegally are served removal warrants by ICE agents after those agents obtain warrants from a judge. The Minnehaha County Jail’s 287(g) agreement will allow trained deputies to serve those warrants, eliminating the need for an ICE agent to return to the jail for that purpose after asking for them.
Callahan told South Dakota Searchlight he’ll be the local officer trained to serve removal warrants. His jail has no inmates with immigration holds.
Pennington County, South Dakota’s second-largest county by population, had four inmates with ICE holds as of Thursday afternoon, spokesperson Helene Duhamel said.
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