Federal Immigration Enforcement Surge Bypasses Fillmore County

FILLMORE COUNTY – Minnesota has been in the spotlight for the last couple of months due to the federal surge in immigration enforcement in the state. However, that surge never trickled into Fillmore County.

Fillmore County Sheriff John DeGeorge said that during the past couple of months, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not contacted his department, and his office has received no reports from local citizens saying they have experienced any operations in Fillmore County.

“I watch the news and see what’s happening in the world, but it’s just very different than what’s happening here,” he said. “It’s kind of ‘business as usual’ for us.” 

One-on-one with Sheriff DeGeorge

Business as usual stretches back through the 29+ years DeGeorge has worked in Fillmore County, starting as a deputy in 1997.

“In the years I’ve worked here, we’ve had little to no contact with immigration authorities, and that’s still true today,” he said.

Although ICE isn’t a presence in Fillmore County, many residents are aware of the federal push on immigration with the massive amount of news reporting, which has led to quite a bit of discussion about immigration enforcement.

Root River Current sat down with DeGeorge in late February to ask him some questions about the issue that has become so prominent in Minnesota. His responses have been edited for length and clarity.

What is the difference between the two agencies — ICE and the county sheriff’s department?

DeGeorge: I think a lot of people maybe don’t understand the difference. ICE is a federal agency that works for the U.S. federal government, and local law enforcement, like us, works under state statute. We have an obligation to enforce state law and state statute, and the federal government and federal agencies, they enforce federal statutes. 

So, the difference really is we don’t have any authority to enforce federal law. If people see things that are illegal, there are federal statutes that make them illegal and that’s all true. But we don’t have the legal authority to enforce those things, or really even to investigate. 

The reality is we don’t have authority to enforce immigration law. We just never have. It’s not something we’ve ever done. So, in that aspect, nothing’s really ever changed for us.

Sometimes the vests on ICE agents include the word police. Do they get involved in local law enforcement?

DeGeorge: They don’t really ever get involved with local law enforcement, either. The public’s probably learning more now, but in law enforcement there’s a pretty clear understanding about those kinds of statutory authorities. They’re completely separate.

The federal government has their job and their responsibilities and local law enforcement has their job and their responsibilities and their authorities. Within law enforcement everybody really understands we don’t have the legal authority to enforce federal law. And the federal government doesn’t have anything to do, usually, with local law enforcement either.

What is the county’s involvement with federal immigration?

DeGeorge: The extent of our, I would say, involvement is that if we arrest someone and they have an immigration detainer, which happens occasionally, not really often, actually, I would say it happens rarely, but if we arrest someone on a state charge, let’s say it’s a sexual assault or a DWI or something like that, or a domestic assault, and that person has a federal immigration detainer, again, we don’t have the authority to enforce that.

We also don’t have the authority to hold them on that detainer. So, what we do, what we’ve always done, is we’ll notify immigration authorities: ‘Hey, we arrested this person here on a state charge. He has an immigration detainer. You know, he’s probably going to get released tomorrow morning when he goes to court or he’s going to get released here in a couple of hours after he gets done getting processed for this DWI.’ They don’t ask us to hold that person any longer than we normally would for a state charge because they know that we can’t. 

For us, the most involvement we have ever had is just simply a phone call to let them know we’ve arrested someone. If this person isn’t important enough on their radar that they want to send an agent or two down to pick them up, they can do that, but we can’t hold them longer.

So, they might look at the clock and say, well, if that guy’s getting out on this DWI in an hour, we’re not going to make it down there anyway. So, then they might not send anybody at all.

They might look and say, OK, it’s a serious charge, it’s a sexual assault, that person’s going to be held in jail for a couple of days, maybe then they would send immigration authorities to pick that person up and take them into custody, but that’s the extent of it for us.

Is your policy the same as most sheriffs across the state?

DeGeorge: Most sheriffs have the exact same policy. There are some counties that have agreements with the federal government. There are some counties that have facilities, and this has nothing to do with politics — it goes back through several presidents — where they’ve had agreements with the federal government to hold immigration detainees.

Some of those counties have large jails with extra space or have even built facilities with extra space because they have a contract with immigration authorities to hold people. If they arrest someone on a local charge and that person has an immigration detainer, they might have authority under a different agreement to hold that person longer. It’s not something that we have. Most counties don’t, either, because it usually goes along with having a contract to house immigration inmates.

Fillmore County resident holds a sign at a January protest after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. ICE presence has been seen in surrounding communities including St. Charles, Plainview, Rochester, Stewartville, Winona, Austin, Albert Lea and Owatonna. (Photo by Julie Fryer)

Are there different rules that ICE operates under regarding arrests?

DeGeorge: I’ve heard and seen different things, but you know, everything I’ve heard, it seems unsubstantiated. I wouldn’t want to comment on those things as you know there’s a lot of emotion around it. And a lot of people kind of see it one way or the other, but I try to make it a practice to not take a stance on something without seeing all of the evidence of it.

I’m not sure exactly what rules they do operate under. I would assume there are some differences with procedures with federal law enforcement because there are differences in procedures with just about any law enforcement organization, but I just don’t know what those are.

What about video recording? If somebody is videoing an arrest, even on your agency, would that be something they shouldn’t be doing?

DeGeorge: No, that’s completely legal. People can video.

We wear body cameras. Now, all of us do. I have one on here right now. And everything we do from every law enforcement function that we perform is recorded on our body cameras. And most of that is public data. There are some things that we catch on recordings that wouldn’t be public data, but we have the ability to redact.

So that really has made the question of can the public record what we do a non-issue? Because of course they can. We do it. And that’s public. So, yeah, the public can record law enforcement interactions and that’s not an issue at all.

And I would say, well, from the Fillmore County perspective, from our deputies out doing their jobs, if the public is recording what we do, it only helps us. Our deputies aren’t out there violating people’s rights. And if they are, we certainly would deal with it.

But again, every time they do anything, we have our own recording of it. So, it’s never harmful or never really bothersome for us nowadays to have someone record what’s happening.