Sheriff considered request to house ICE detainees in county jails

Earlier this year, Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan complained that he felt “handcuffed” by the federal court order in the Melendres civil rights case, which prohibits sheriff’s deputies from enforcing federal immigration law.

But internal sheriff’s office emails recently obtained by Phoenix New Times via a public records request reveal that in April, Sheridan was exploring the possibility of holding immigration detainees on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In an April 9 email to Sheridan from Christopher McGregor, a deputy director in Phoenix’s ICE office, McGregor wrote that he was “following up” on a previous conversation they had about “possibly using one of your facilities to house ICE detainees.” He also told Sheridan that ICE is “looking to secure 1,000 beds and would like to understand the potential for expansion if needed.”

McGregor went on to ask Sheridan a series of detailed questions about the county’s jails, such as the capacity of the facility, its accreditations, any inspections done in the last 18 months and if the facility involved will be for ICE’s exclusive use or house prisoners for other agencies, such as the U.S. Border Patrol.

It is unclear if or how Sheridan responded to that message. 

But in August, when Maricopa County’s jail appeared on a list published by The Washington Post of possible new detention sites — part of ICE’s $45 billion expansion to enact President Donald Trump’s mass deportation scheme — sheriff’s office spokesman Chris Hegstrom threw water on the possibility of county jails housing ICE detainees.

“The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office adheres to the policy of not detaining inmates on behalf of ICE,” Hegstrom wrote in an email response to a New Times inquiry at the time. “Inmates are released in accordance with the release orders issued by the courts. While ICE is informed of an inmate’s release, we do not extend detention beyond the scheduled release date and time.”

Contacted for this piece, Hegstrom confirmed via email that ICE had approached Sheridan about renting a facility from the sheriff’s office. But he said the policy he outlined in August still stands. 

“MCSO is not, nor has it been, in talks with ICE about detaining persons for ICE,” Hegstrom wrote.

The sheriff’s office remains chummy with ICE, as demonstrated by a February email string between McGregor and Sheridan, in which McGregor asked if Sheridan would be available for a get-to-know-you meeting “with our Field Office Director and our command staff.” Sheridan replied that he would “love to,” writing that he “worked very closely with my ICE counterparts from 2010 to 2016, when I was the Chief Deputy.” He told McGregor to get with his administrative assistant and hammer out a date.

A chummy relationship

ICE and the sheriff’s office already work hand in glove in some respects. Two ICE agents are stationed at the county jails’ intake center to question all arrestees about their immigration status. Back in January, Sheridan told 12 News that as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown, he envisioned the sheriff’s office becoming “a way station for ICE.” 

In a separate interview with the same outlet, Sheridan said he would help ICE with immigration enforcement — if it was “constitutional” and “legal,” noting that his office was “under a court order not to be involved in any illegal immigration issues unless they commit a (state) crime.”

That court order was the result of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio — with Sheridan as his chief deputy — turning the sheriff’s office into a mini-version of ICE, with 160 deputies cross-trained under ICE’s 287(g) program to act as immigration cops. The agency terrorized Hispanic neighborhoods in the Valley, pulling over cars for minor traffic violations to ask for brown folks’ papers and arrest them.

Arpaio and Sheridan’s anti-immigrant shtick slowly came to an end in 2013, when federal judge G. Murray Snow found that the sheriff’s minions were guilty of widespread racial profiling. Snow ordered a litany of reforms, which the sheriff’s office has still not fully complied with, supposedly costing county taxpayers an estimated $350 million so far. Sheridan and his political allies have made much of this cost, though a court-ordered audit recently revealed that 72% of the so-called expenses had been improperly attributed to compliance efforts.

In 2016, long before he became sheriff, Sheridan was also caught lying to Snow and found guilty of two counts of civil contempt, landing himself on the county attorney’s Brady list of dishonest cops. His memory of that spanking may be what keeps him from crossing one bright line with the judge.

Other emails show he’s already rebuffed ICE on one subject. In February, another local ICE official emailed Sheridan asking him if he had any interest in joining the agency’s newly revamped 287(g) program. Sheridan wrote back, telling the ICE official that the sheriff’s office was once a party to the initiative, but that ended under the Obama administration and now a court order “prevents us from participating in this valuable program.”

He added, with a hint of melancholy: “I will reach out if this changes, but at this point there is no end in sight.”

Sylvia Herrera, a community activist and a member of the court-mandated Community Advisory Board that oversees the sheriff’s office, told New Times that it didn’t surprise her that Sheridan and ICE had been having meetings and discussions. 

She pointed to the sheriff’s office’s own data, which she said showed a “higher rate of arrests in the Hispanic community” and may indicate a certain degree of coordination between ICE and the sheriff’s office, or at least a wink and a nod. Hypothetically, a law enforcement officer could improperly arrest someone knowing that their immigration status will be checked by ICE in the jails. 

Herrera said it would be “totally unacceptable” for the sheriff’s office to get involved in warehousing detainees for ICE — detainees that may face civil immigration violations instead of criminal charges. But she didn’t discount the possibility.

“It’s concerning,” she said. “There is still a strong relationship between the MCSO and ICE.”