Senate kills ICE bill

BOISE — The Idaho Senate has halted the advancement of a bill that would have required law enforcement agencies to apply for cooperative agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Following the bill’s passage out of the House on Thursday, Sen. Mark Harris, R-Soda Springs, motioned to not concur with the House’s amendments to the legislation, preventing it from advancing because it violates Senate Rule 28(D). Under this rule, a bill cannot be amended to remove or incorporate provisions of another bill already pending in the Senate.

Senate Bill 1247 was originally the Idaho e-Verify Act, which required all public agencies to implement the federal e-Verify program, which confirms eligibility to work in the United States for new employees. The House amendment reworked the bill entirely, effectively swapping a pending ICE cooperation bill for the stalled e-Verify legislation.

By unanimous consent, the Senate opted not to advance the reworked bill. 

Under the amended Senate bill, city and county law enforcement would be required to apply for cooperation agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These arrangements — known as section 287(g) memorandums of agreement — allow local law enforcement officers to be trained and deputized under programs that permit limited enforcement of federal immigration law.

These programs operate under three distinct models. 

A jail enforcement model allows officers to identify and process removable undocumented immigrants with either pending or active criminal charges. A task force model allows officers to exercise limited immigration enforcement authority while performing their routine police duties and to participate in ICE-led task forces. A warrant service officer model allows officers to serve executive administrative warrants on undocumented immigrants in custody. 

Under each of these models, individual officers would need to participate in training and/or obtain certification from ICE to be deputized to enforce federal immigration law.

In cases where a law enforcement agency is “unable” to enter into a section 287(g) agreement, the law enforcement agency must publish a statement on the reasons for its inability to enter into an agreement, as well as the alternative efforts made to cooperate with “enforcement and removal operation of immigration and customs enforcement.”

According to the ICE website, a variety of sheriff's offices, such as those in Kootenai and Owyhee counties, are already engaged in some capacity with at least one of these three agreements. At the direction of Gov. Brad Little, the Idaho State Police also entered a 287(g) agreement last year to transport unauthorized immigrants convicted of crimes to deportation centers.

This bill is a new version of House Bill 659, which passed out of the House last month before being held in the Senate committee by a one-vote margin. In the public hearing before the House and the Senate, the measure was opposed by the police chiefs and county sheriffs who testified. 

Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue, who testified on the previous bill on behalf of the Idaho Sheriffs Association, said sheriffs in the state were "absolutely opposed" to the legislation due to it mandating what sheriffs can and can't do. 

He highlighted that law enforcement would be on the hook for backfill and other expenses associated with officers departing for ICE-led training, which would result in fewer officers to participate in daily patrol duties.

In addition to testifying on previous versions of the bill, Ada County Sheriff Matt Clifford issued a statement last week underscoring that his office already cooperates with ICE daily by sharing arrest lists and complying with lawful requests to hold individuals for deportation.

Clifford also emphasized that he has been able to align or decouple his agency's operations depending on whether federal objectives align with the county's needs. 

"In my role as sheriff, I have made decisions to end partnerships with federal agencies when their demands or direction were overreaching and no longer in the best interest of Ada County," Clifford stated. "A forced relationship with ICE under a mandated program gives me no such option when participation begins to erode what is best for our community."