North Carolina's Latino immigrant communities oppose bill that would require sheriffs to work with ICE

Latino immigrant communities have long been the most formidable opposition to immigration enforcement bills proposed by Republicans in the North Carolina legislature.

In years past, community protests have impacted local sheriff elections and played a role in Gov. Roy Cooper's decisions to veto some of these bills.

This year, a large, veto-proof Republican majority virtually guarantees that the latest immigration enforcement bill, House Bill 10, could become law.

Bills like these are nothing new – there was House Bill 370 in 2019 and, more recently, Senate Bill 101 in 2021. Governor Cooper vetoed the two.

“We have been working on building relationships between law enforcement and the community for a long time,” Antelmo Salazar, an activist based in the city of Henderson, said in Spanish. “But these racist bills are harming what we’ve built.”

Republican lawmakers have argued for years that immigrants without legal status accused of any crime should be deported. They proposed that local sheriffs cooperate by releasing immigrants in their jails to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE.

That's the essence of Bill 10, and it faces the same criticism as its previous versions: Residents say it would damage community trust in law enforcement, while others say that it violates due process rights and Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable seizures.

Many members of the Latino community are afraid

Salazar leads Henderson Fuerza Activa, or Hendfact, a local immigrant advocacy group. They recently hosted a series of forums on immigration law and knowing your rights in rural towns in Granville, Vance and Warren counties.

“The point of these forums is that our community is definitely afraid,” Salazar said.

Alfredo Hernández, 41, who emigrated from Mexico more than 20 years ago, attended the forums.

“If we all came together and tried to make legislators understand that we are a majority and that we contribute to the state, they would understand that we are not here to do harm,” Hernández told WUNC in Spanish.

Hernandez is undocumented and fears being separated from his family if he commits even a minor crime.

El Pueblo, a Raleigh-based Latino nonprofit, called it an “anti-immigration bill” based on “the false premise that immigrants are a threat to public safety when in reality they are essential to the state’s economy.”

The Hendfact Forums were led by Becky Moriello, an attorney with the Raleigh Immigration Law Firm. In her previous experience representing immigrants detained in prison, she said due process rights were under threat.

“If someone posts bail while they are in jail and their criminal charge is still pending…and they have not been convicted of anything, ICE will arrest that person , thereby depriving her of her right to fight her criminal charge,” Moriello said. “That’s what we’ve seen and that’s what I hope will continue to happen.”

What the bill says

Current state law requires sheriffs to determine the legal status of people arrested for felony or drunken driving, and to notify ICE if they cannot determine it. They are not required to honor ICE detainees, however.

The bill would require the state's 100 sheriffs to obey those requests. In detention, suspects can be held for an additional 48 hours in jail to allow time for ICE agents to come and take them into federal custody and possibly deport them.

If signed into law, it would only affect immigrants without legal status who are arrested and detained in prison, primarily for violent crimes or serious misdemeanors.

According to the latest summary of the bill, the legal status of suspects in jail must be checked with ICE if they are charged with any of the following: homicide, sex offenses, kidnapping, human trafficking, gang charges, felonious assault or class A1 misdemeanor. .

A request from ICE could then trigger a detention, and the bill requires a state judicial official to approve the detention of a given suspect.

However, ICE sanctions could still be imposed against any immigrant detained in prisons for a criminal offense, violent or not, according to the text of the bill.

“We have immigration laws in this country; ICE (is) largely responsible for enforcing those laws,” said bill sponsor Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell. “Somewhere around half of their enforcement is done through inmates.”

Sheriffs speak out

Rep. Hall said the bill is necessary because a handful of North Carolina sheriffs are currently refusing ICE detention requests.

These are mostly urban Democratic sheriffs, such as in Wake, Durham, Mecklenburg and Guilford counties.

Sheriffs in Wake and Mecklenburg, the state's most populous counties, oppose the bill and had previously opposed earlier versions.

“We want to make our communities safer, but HB 10 will make us less safe by creating distrust in local law enforcement,” Wake County Sheriff Willie Rowe said in a statement. “No one should fear interacting with the Wake County Sheriff’s Office because of their federal immigration status.”

Mecklenburg Sheriff Garry McFadden has long been a vocal opponent of bills proposing collaboration with ICE — he is among a list of 11 sheriffs who signed a public letter opposing the bill.

“If we look at the number of sheriffs who oppose the bill, those sheriffs represent more than two-thirds of the population of North Carolina,” said Estefania Arteaga, an anti-immigration activist in Charlotte with the Carolina Migrant Network . “This is inherently a bill that is not representative of what North Carolinians actually want and need.”

North Carolina sheriff's associations declined to comment on the bill when contacted by WUNC.

And after

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore recently told reporters that the bill would not stall during negotiations.

Earlier this month, state representatives voted not to accept the state Senate's amendments to the bill, which sent the bill to a conference committee.

State senators made an amendment to the bill that would allow anyone to file a complaint when a sheriff fails to comply with ICE as an “enforcement mechanism,” according to Sen. Buck Newton, R-Wilson. This would trigger an investigation by the North Carolina attorney general and possible legal action.

The House will have to vote on the bill again after negotiating the Senate's changes to the bill.

Rep. Hall said the main content of the bill should not change, according to the Associated Press.

Colin Campbell contributed to this story.