Henderson County sheriff addresses ICE misconceptions

Amid rumors around the country of mass immigration raids, Sheriff Lowell Griffin says it’s unlikely that level of enforcement will happen within Henderson County because of his office’s long-standing relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out there, and with so much on social media, there’s so much misinformation that’s spread. I think it’s important to get the facts out there,” Griffin says.

The Henderson County Sheriff’s Office signed on with ICE’s 287(g) program in 2008. The program authorizes ICE officials to train state and local law enforcement to perform specific immigration functions.

The office renewed its 287(g) Jail Enforcement contract in 2020. Of the 172 sworn deputies in Henderson County, two detention officers have been trained and certified through the program, Griffin says.

“I don’t think we’re going to see an aggressive ICE response in Henderson County because we’ve basically already done the work to try to remove those that have ties to any kind of criminal organization,” Griffin says.

The Trump administration’s threats of mass immigration raids by ICE, including in previously protected spaces of churches, schools and hospitals, have immigrant communities and activists across the nation on edge. Concerns led to multiple demonstrations in downtown Asheville in February and also prompted Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller to issue a statement.

“My stance is clear and strong that immigration enforcement is not allowed on our school campuses unless forced through a valid court order,” Miller said in a Feb. 7 statement issued by the Sheriff’s Office.

Yancey County is another county in the area that signed up for a part of the 287(g) program, in its case, the Warrant Service Officer model. Xpress reached out to the Yancey County Sheriff’s Office but did not receive a response by deadline.

The three 287(g) models are:

• The Jail Enforcement Model, which enables trained detention officers to place a 48-hour hold on undocumented arrestees so ICE can choose to pursue immigration enforcement.
• The Task Force Model, which allows local law enforcement to enforce limited ICE laws.
• The Warrant Service Officer program, which trains and authorizes local officers to serve additional warrants on undocumented arrestees.

The model that Henderson County follows is similar to a state law passed in November that requires law enforcement to notify ICE about any arrestees who lack documentation and hold those people for 48 hours to give ICE time to check their immigration status.

Sheriff Griffin recently spoke with Xpress about the Henderson County Sheriff’s Department’s role in immigration enforcement.

Editor’s note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Xpress: How long does training for the 287(g) program typically take for a detention officer?

Griffin: They have a weeklong training course every two years and yearly training courses.

Have people been arrested by Henderson County deputies on solely immigration status infractions?

That’s the misconception. All that the 287(g) jail model allows us to do is look into a person’s immigration history, only after there’s been probable cause to arrest that person for violation of a North Carolina criminal statute and a magistrate has confined that person to jail.

Until they’re confined to jail, we have absolutely no authority to even ask somebody what their immigration status is.

With the 287(g) model, we are not working to apprehend people based on immigration status. That’s not what we do. If somebody’s arrested, once they’re confined in the jail, then we look at the immigration status. After that, we can place a detainer [hold] that puts that person on the list for federal authorities to look at to see if that is a person the federal authorities want to take into custody and transport to Georgia for a federal hearing only after all of their state charges have been adjudicated, or they’ve been released from those state charges.

I have no deputies that go out and make arrests based solely on immigration, based solely on any type of race, ethnicity, anything like that. That’s not what we do.

Are any school resource officers for the Henderson County Department trained in ICE enforcement? 

No, the only ICE officers that I have are assigned to the jail; there are no officers assigned to patrol, assigned to investigations, assigned to us as a school resource officer, that are certified.

What requests have the federal government made of your department?

I have met with officials from ICE from Atlanta and Charlotte, and there’ve been zero requests. I was concerned about how ICE may be operating in the county, and I wanted to be aware of what’s going on.

What I was told during that meeting is that the ICE officials are doing targeted enforcement. In their words, it’s called “worst first.” They are basically looking for folks that have been involved in criminal activity, and they’re looking to arrest these folks and put them into the [court] system.

But they told me that there will not be buses pulling up at Walmart, buses pulling up at schools, buses pulling up at other workplaces, just to round up immigrants.

Matter of fact, what I was told is they don’t have the resources even if that was something that they desired to do. They don’t have the bed space, they don’t have the manpower, but they are doing the targeted enforcement.

Have any residents or business owners in Henderson County expressed concerns over aggressive immigration enforcement? 

Listen, there’s been no concern here. Because we’ve had the 287(g) program in Henderson County, once anybody with a criminal record was arrested, we’ve been able to flush out those that have cartel ties, that have ties to different gangs, whether it’s across the nation or back into another country.

I really think because of the model, we’ve been able to keep our community safe, and that includes the immigrant community. We’ve had folks from the immigrant community come to us with concerns about dangerous people in their community.

Is there still a possibility of outside ICE officials coming into the county? 

Oh, that’s definitely a possibility. If they track somebody that basically is on one of the lists that they have, that has been involved in criminal activity, it’s highly possible that they could come into Henderson County. But because we have already taken so many steps to identify those folks and to remove those folks from our community, I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of ICE activity in Henderson County.

Any other comments regarding ICE or future ICE presence in the county? 

We’re going to maintain this working relationship on the detention side that we have with us and continue to identify that criminal element.

I think what people will see in Henderson County is, even with the change in the administration, nothing really is changing in this county because this is the same operation we’ve been running for years.

But once again, it’s only, and I’ll stress that, only once somebody is confined to the jail, we have that authority to look at your immigration status.

Can departments only be part of one of the three 287(g) program models?

I think departments can enter into agreements with ICE for as many models as they feel like they’re equipped to handle.

But if I wanted to develop further partnership with ICE, I don’t have the resources to do that. I don’t know of anybody that really has the resources right now to handle all of the cases that come in and to be able to go out here and try to conduct any type of immigration enforcement. That’s for the federal officials to do. We just don’t have the resources to do that. I don’t know of any local law enforcement agency that has an excess of manpower. All of our folks, with budgets the way they are today, we’re spread pretty thin.

Editor’s note: This story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Reporting and Editing.