The Dickson County Sheriff’s Office signed a memorandum of understanding with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 5.
According to Dickson County Sheriff Tim Eads, the MOU is a 287 (g) agreement, which are defined by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security (TDOSHS) as “a voluntary partnership between state and local law enforcement and federal immigration agencies which allows designated officers to perform limited immigration functions under the supervision of federal immigration authorities. These agreements promote more efficient identification of removable criminal aliens in jails and prisons, reduce state and local detention costs, and ultimately strengthen public safety by removing violent criminals from Tennessee communities.”
Eads told The Dickson Post the agreements have been made between ICE and participating counties to have dedicated deputies who will initiate warrants at ICE’s direction for those already detained in jail for other crimes and serve those warrants when those inmates’ previous sentences have been fulfilled. In the past, Eads said, if ICE alerted law enforcement agencies that someone already in their custody was in the country illegally and had committed other crimes in the United States while in the country illegally, it was up to ICE to initiate and serve the warrants, whereas under the MOU, the sheriff offices can now do that on their own, saving time.
“One of the advantages is, it could speed up the process. If they say, ‘Yes, we want it,’ instead of waiting for them to process the detainer warrant and then all of that, we can process and house the detainer warrant. It just makes it a little more efficient, but it doesn’t really change anything. This is not us putting somebody on a task force and going out and doing ICE raids. This just means if we take an illegal in on a local charge, that we also agree to contact them. That’s what we’ve always done, anyway, on a voluntary basis,” Eads said…