The Alamance County Sheriff’s Office will stop housing those detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement effective Nov. 16, according Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson in a press release Nov. 19.
According to the press release, Johnson sent a letter to ICE and said the decision comes from changes to state law taking effect Dec. 1. North Carolina House Bill 307, known as “Iryna’s Law,” tightens rules on pretrial release, electronic monitoring and detention of individuals charged with violent crimes.
Johnson wrote that the new requirements will affect several aspects of the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office Detention Center, the press release said.
“These changes materially affect our ability to manage classification, housing, and supervision of detainees in our facility and will require us to prioritize bed space and resources for local and state inmates and remain compliant with state law and court directives,” Johnson wrote in the release.
Byron Tucker, ACSO director of communications and public information officer, said the housing decision has nothing to do with the current ICE operations in North Carolina. U.S. Border Patrol agents detained over 200 people in Charlotte as of Nov. 19 according to the Charlotte Observer.
“ICE does not call us with their intents on where they're going to operate,” Tucker said. “We've never been included in that and we've never assisted them with that. So we were unaware that they were even coming to North Carolina.”
Tucker also said the decision was made solely based on House Bill 307.
“What this does is ends our commitment to house their detainees, not ours, their detainees, and plus, it ends our requirement to transport their detainees as well,” Tucker said. “So it's kind of twofold.”
According to Tucker, similar to ICE, ACSO already has a contract with the U.S. Marshals and the Statewide Misdemeanant Confinement Program, where the office has held U.S. Marshal prisoners and those charged with state misdemeanors for several years.
“With the new law changing, we're not going to discontinue those agreements, but we felt like that with having to guarantee ICE bed space, whether they use it or not, based on the new law that's coming, we just felt like we just couldn't do this any longer,” Tucker said.