Locals ask county not to cooperate with ICE; county jail has existing contract for federal holds
Several county residents spoke during the July 24 Cascade County Commission meeting asking officials not to collaborate with U.S. Immigrations and Customs.
There was no contract with ICE specifically on the agenda, but the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office is negotiating a new contract with the U.S. Marshals Service and is also in discussions with ICE for a separate contract, but there’s no draft or movement on that at this point, according to county officials.
The county does have an existing contract with the Marshals that specifically includes ICE as an authorized agency user.
That contract was signed in May 2021 by Cory Reeves, who was the undersheriff at the time, and commissioners ratified the contract in June 2021.
Jasmine Taylor, who is challenging Reeves in the city mayoral race, spoke in opposition to cooperation with ICE.
Mark Frisbie, a local defense attorney, said he’s seen national news coverage of ICE operations, which he called “immoral.”
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“If you do business with the devil, you’re going to be perpetuating what the devil does,” Frisbie said. “Please don’t do business with the devil, stay away from ICE.”
Irina Mills said she’s a first generation immigrant and has lived in the U.S. for almost 20 years. She’s a local English as a second language teacher.
She said right now, many immigrants are “living in fear.”
She said the public was told that ICE would be going after hardened criminals, but that’s not what she’s seen.
“Let’s be a county that chooses compassion over fear,” Mills said.
Dawn Skerritt, pastor at First United Methodist Church downtown, said that she opposes any county collaborating with ICE.
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“This is not just a policy issue, it’s a moral one,” she said and it forces us to ask ourselves who we are as a community.
Jennifer Yoder said she was asking for more transparency on how much the county was cooperating with ICE.
She said the federal contracts erode the public trust and it’s a “stain on our community’s reputation.”
County Attorney Josk Racki said that the sheriff’s office was in preliminary talks about a potential contract with ICE, but the current Marshal contract covers ICE holds at a current rate of $115 per inmate per day.
In that contract, the county agreed to hold federal detainees, which includes those charged with federal offenses and those awaiting immigration hearings.
The contract doesn’t give the county the authority to deny a class of prisoner or those arrested by a certain federal agency, Racki said.
Racki told The Electric that all current immigration holds have either an I-203 form, which is an order for someone to be detained by ICE or an I-247, which also allows for a local facility to hold ICE detainees.
Those forms don’t give local facilities much information as to why the person is being detained by ICE, Racki said, but they give the agency the authority to detain that individual.
Local detention facilities can hold someone for up to 48 hours on those forms, but since the Cascade County jail has contracted with the Marshals, the federal agencies can hold their detainees here until the federal agency lift the hold, Racki said.
The 2021 contract includes the following provision: “the local government agrees to accept federal detainees only upon presentation by a law enforcement officer of the federal government or a U.S. Marshals Service designee with the proper agency credentials. The local government agrees to release federal detainees only to law enforcement officers of the authorized federal government agency initially committing the federal detainee or to a deputy U.S. Marshal or a USMS designee with proper agency credentials. Those federal detainees who are remanded to custody by a deputy U.S. Marshal may only be released to a deputy U.S. Marshal or an agent specified by the deputy U.S. Marshal of the judicial district.”
As of July 25, the jail roster shows eight immigration holds, two of which have been held here since at least June 24.
Racki told The Electric that on July 24, five of those were U.S. Border Patrol holds, one of whom has been in the jail for 72 days.
Sheriff Jesse Slaughter said Border Patrol holds are typically those picked up crossing the border illegally rather than ICE holds who have been picked up for various reasons after being in the country illegally.
The current Marshal contract allows for either party to terminate the agreement with 30 days notice.
Slaughter and the Marshals are currently negotiating a new daily rate for the federal holds.
During the meeting, Slaughter said that both Republican and Democratic federal administrations have deported illegal immigrants.
He said the jail has room for local inmates.
Cartels are shifting tactics to the less secure northern U.S. border, Slaughter said, so Montana may become more vulnerable to carel activities.
He said the county jail has been holding ICE detainees for years.
The county has had some form of agreement with the U.S. Marshals since at least 2010 and in a 2018 story following jail overcrowding, The Electric reported that as of Sept. 6, 2018, there were 51 federal pre-trial holds from the U.S. Marshals, plus one hold for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and one from the Bureau of Prisons who was federally sentenced and awaiting transport, according to the former jail commander, O’Fallon.
Slaughter said the jail hasn’t typically had many ICE detainees during his tenure as sheriff, but it’s not something they just started doing and “illegal immigration has been a political issue for decades.”
The actual cost to run the jail is about $14 million annually and CCSO gets about $4 million in tax revenue, so under the current model, they have to fill that revenue gap with state and federal contracts.
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In 2021, Slaughter orchestrated a move to end the county’s contract requiring it to hold about 150 state prisoners, which required legislative approval, and in that move, the Cascade County jail accepted some of the federal inmates that had been held in Shelby.
Those changes were discussed publicly at multiple county commission meetings and reported by The Electric.
Slaughter said during the July 24 meeting that if the county cancels the Marshals contract, he’d have to layoff about half of the jail staff and would still face a $5 million shortfall.
He said he doesn’t like the funding model he inherited at the jail and has raised that issue with commissioners during their budget meetings this summer.
Slaughter said that he had a serious concern about ICE agents wearing masks, an issue that has been raised in other communities, national press and during the commission meeting.
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Lawmakers have introduced bills that would prohibit the agents from using masks.
Slaughter said that CCSO wasn’t involved in that aspect of immigration enforcement, but that he expects ICE will contact his office at some point.
He said that the citizens are the boss, but if the county eliminates contracts, the consequences are severe and he could see public safety infrastructure collapsing.
From The Electric’s July 18 story on the county’s discussion of the CCSO budget for the current fiscal year:
Slaughter said he’s begun contract negotiations with the federal government and the U.S. Marshals had indicated Cascade County was up for a rate increase for their federal inmate holds.
Slaughter said there are interesting things at play with the federal contract and that they typically contract based on actual costs with a daily rate.
“We run an efficient jail at low cost,” Slaughter said and their daily cost per inmate is $82.50.
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He said they’ve started including actual depreciation of the jail facility in their cost calculation and he was optimistic that they’d be able to increase the federal daily rate to $135.
“We hold the most prisoners,” Slaughter said of federal holds, in part because Great Falls is a Con Air hub.
The current federal rate is $115.
Slaughter said during the July 1 meeting that the feds wanted to increase their contract by 40 inmates because they’ve been holding them in Wyoming and have to transport all over Montana.
For ICE holds, he predicted about six, based on what had been coming to the county jail so far under the Marshals contract.
Slaughter and commissioners also discussed the potential for an ICE contract during a May meeting, when Slaughter told commissioners they’ve previously held ICE holds under the Marshals contract and there haven’t been many ICE holds in the past.
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On June 24, there were five immigration holds in the Cascade County Adult Detention Center.
On July 17, there remained five, including three who were there in June.
Slaughter said he was in talks with ICE and had proposed a $150 daily rate for their holds since the county jail was the only facility in the state holding them.
He said he’d been told ICE was “about to start a massive operation in Montana.”
According to a late June New York Times report, ICE arrests have increased 364 percent in Montana since Trump took office, which equated to 30 arrests.
Slaughter said the southern border was largely closed down so now cartels are shifting to the northern border and Montana could see increased activity.
Slaughter said that with that combination of factors, “we’re probably going to see a massive uptick in those arrests coming” and if U.S. Border Patrol starts picking up people trying to illegally enter Montana through Canada, they’d likely be held at the Cascade County jail.
Slaughter said they were seeing fewer overdoses lately due to the southern border closure and Undersheriff Scott Van Dyken said the price of drugs had gone through the roof.
Slaughter said county officials sent what he called a “white paper” about jail operations to ICE, but “ICE detainees are highly unpredictable.”
As of July 17, Slaughter said they haven’t heard back from ICE.
Any contract with ICE would go before the county commission for approval, as the current Marshals contract did and an updated Marshals contract will also require commission approval. All of those discussions and votes would be held in public meetings.
Slaughter said that he can increase federal hold beds in the fall once the booking area remodel is complete and could likely increase by about 40 but that creates logistical problems.
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