By Charlie Mahler, KYMN News
Amidst media reports that Border czar Tom Homan is seeking to tie increased Department of Homeland Security access to county jails to the drawdown of ICE and other DHS agents in Minnesota, Rice County Sheriff Jesse Thomas outlined his county’s DHS-related protocols on Wednesday’s KYMN Morning Show.
“We’ve always worked with our federal partners,” Thomas told KYMN’s Rich Larson. “We haven’t changed our procedures; this is what we’ve always done. So, if someone comes in our facility and they have an ICE detainer, we contact ICE and say, hey, we have this person here, we see you have a detainer, they’re going to be with us for a while.”
“When that person goes to court and are released, from the judge – just because the judge releases them doesn’t mean they just get to walk right out of the courthouse – so then they have to come back to our facility and get processed back out. When we know they are getting released, we contact ICE and say this person is being released.”
“It takes us one to two hours to process somebody,” Thomas continued. “99% of the time they’re there (ICE) before the person gets released and then they pick them up as they walk out the door. And, if they’re not there, the person just walks out.”
Thomas characterized his Operation Metro Surge relationship with ICE positively.
“We haven’t had a lot of issues,” he said. “They’ve been pretty respectful with us and same with us to them. They have a mission, they want to complete their mission, and we just need to keep everybody safe in our communities.
“I’ve always said that Minneapolis is way different than Rice County, and sometimes people forget that.”
Contact Charlie Mahler at news@kymnnradio.net
