Legislation requiring sheriffs to hold people for ICE clears Senate

House Bill 370 would require police and sheriffs to check everyone they arrest against the federal immigration database and, if requested, to hold them on detainer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

After the 25-18 party-line vote in the Senate, the measure heads back to the House for one final vote before going to Gov. Roy Cooper.

Cooper signaled his opposition to the proposal in a Monday afternoon statement:

"As the former top law enforcement officer in our state, I know that current law allows us to lock up and prosecute dangerous criminals regardless of immigration status. This bill isn’t about that – in addition to being unconstitutional, it’s about scoring political points and using fear to divide us."

Bill sponsors have said the proposal is designed to protect public safety, citing cases where people in the U.S. illegally who have been charged with crimes commit more crimes after being released from jail on bond.

"This bill is the right thing to do if we're clear on who we should protect – criminals or law-abiding citizens," said Sen. Chuck Edwards, R-Henderson. "What we're talking about is cooperating with an agency that is trying to protect us."

Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker, Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden and several other sheriffs elected last fall campaigned on building stronger relationships with their local Latino communities, which they said have been reluctant to report problems to law enforcement because some residents fear being deported.

The bill sets out a process in which a judge or magistrate would order whether an inmate should be held on a detainer request, based on whether the inmate is the same person identified in the request. The inmate could be held for up to 48 hours after a prisoner is otherwise qualified to be released on bond.

Sen. Mujtaba Mohammed, D-Mecklenburg, called the proposal "Trump-like tactics" that will instill fear in immigrant communities.

Edwards said the proposal has nothing to do with border security, separating families or any other national immigration issue. Sen. Dan Bishop, R-Mecklenburg, said it merely requires "a modicum of cooperation" by sheriffs with ICE.

But Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham, noted that the federal government doesn't require such cooperation, so the state shouldn't either.

The state is inviting a legal challenge, McKissick said, because federal law prohibits states from setting up their own immigration enforcement standards.

Counties also could be on the hook for civil damages for holding someone in jail unlawfully, he said, because some courts have said ICE detainers, which aren't approved by any judge, violate the Constitution.

McKissick reserved his strongest remarks for the removal provision.

"This is intended to be intimidating. It is intended to be chilling. It is intended to be coercive," he said.

Earlier in the day, immigrant advocacy groups voiced opposition to the bill and called on Cooper to veto it.

Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, state NAACP president, compared the bill to other "common sense legislation" that has been rejected in courts and in the court of public opinion, such as a 2016 law that dictated which public bathrooms transgender people could use and a 2013 law making various election-related changes, including a voter ID requirement.

"[This bill] could very well be translated as a duly directed message to the newly elected sheriffs to get in your place and stay there," Spearman said at a news conference, "and to immigrants that we will do all in our power to keep you from being here in this so-called land of the free."

Griselda Alonso, who moved to North Carolina from her native Mexico more than 20 years ago, said the legislation has created fear among immigrant communities statewide.

"You are afraid to drive. You are afraid to go to the school with your children. You are afraid to go to the hospital," Alonso said.

Spearman called the removal provision in the bill a "hateful power grab," and Susanna Birdsong, senior policy counsel for the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, noted the legislation would mark the first revision in more than a century to a state statute allowing sheriffs to be removed for crimes committed in office.

"Hands off our elected sheriffs," said Ana Blackburn, co-chair of the North Carolina Poor People's Campaign. "The biggest threat to our democracy is leadership that undermines our Constitution in an attempt to undo the will of the people in order to fulfill a political party's agenda."

Metro sheriffs aren't the only ones who have balked at the bill, said Karen Anderson, state ACLU director. Advocates for domestic violence victims, clergy members and children of immigrants have all asked lawmakers to kill the bill, she said.

"The only people they've listened to is ICE," Anderson said. "They've made clear who they're responding to, and it's not North Carolinians."

The North Carolina Association of Educators also issued a statement Monday opposing the bill, calling it "an ill-designed, inhumane measure" and a "terrible and reprehensible idea." ICE crackdowns have ripped apart immigrant families and made children afraid to go to school, the group said.

"We are a nation of immigrants," Spearman said. "We ought to be sensitive to the immigrants among us."

Alonso said she hopes lawmakers takes her concerns into consideration.

"They have to listen to the people," she said.