I'm old enough to remember when the closed private prison in Appleton was posited as a place where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees could be incarcerated.
Witnees Immigrants for Sale: Will Appleton’s shuttered private prison open in human trafficking scheme? (2011) and Opposition to CoreCivic bid to re-open Appleton Prison as ICE detention center meet to Tuesday (2019).
But such attempts failed, and other counties' public jails got the contracts. How's that working out?
Here's one story from the Minnesota Reformer:
There is only one ICE detainee left in Sherburne County jail
By Nafi SoumareIn a much publicized move a few years ago, Sherburne County offered up its jail to house federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees in an effort to make extra money.
The county encompassing part of St. Cloud and that supported former President Donald Trump by 37 points in 2016, had hoped to rake in $100 dollars per detainee per day.
The effort has fallen flat under the weight of widespread reports of mistreatment of vulnerable detainees and a slew of litigation that followed.
One of the final two ICE detainees in Sherburne county jail was released recently. The final detainee was set to be released but had his bail revoked.
ICE has contracts with three counties in Minnesota, including Sherburne, which is home to the state’s second-largest county jail. In 2017, Sherburne County signed a contract with ICE guaranteeing that the jail would make available 300 beds for ICE detainees per day, making it the largest holding facility for ICE detainees in the state. For each detainee the county held, Sherburne would receive about $100 per day.
Though Sherburne has the most beds dedicated to ICE detainees, however, 36 ICE detainees were held in Freeborn County, 104 in Kandiyohi County, and only one in Sherburne, as of November 13.
The decline comes after Sherburne County in 2019 attempted to increase their ICE beds from 300 to 500, but was denied.
A spokesperson for Sherburne County Sheriff Joel Brott told the Reformer that the contract they have with ICE no longer guarantees 300 beds a day. The spokesperson said the empty ICE beds come at no cost to the taxpayer and are filled with county inmates and overflow from other federal agencies.
Increased public pressure and negative media coverage have coincided with the slow leak of ICE detainees from Sherburne County. Over 40 Elk River interfaith groups signed a petition in 2022 calling for the immediate release of all Sherburne County ICE detainees. Even then, the prison was housing less than 20 immigration inmates a day.
Sherburne has also failed to meet ICE detention requirements for mental health care and general wellbeing of their detainees.
A 2020 inspection by ICE into the Sherburne County facility showed that the facility failed to provide suicide prevention care for their inmates; and failed to conduct routine welfare checks or provide detainees on suicide watch with a daily check by a mental health worker, all of which are mandated by ICE detention standards.
ICE didn’t respond to a request for an on-the-record comment.
Sahan Journal reported on a Sherburne County detainee who was put on suicide watch, detained in a cold, dark room for 23 hours a day and denied proper mental health support.
Robyn Meyer-Thompson, attorney at the Immigration Law Center of Minnesota, said Sherburne County has faced a slew of lawsuits.
In 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Sherburne County for the wrongful imprisonment and attempted deportation of a U.S. citizen.
Another lawsuit filed that year alleged Sherburne County correctional officers were complicit in the suicide of one of their inmates, ignoring warning signs and failing to perform routine wellness checks.
“And so what we just generally noticed is that after that lawsuit was filed, ICE basically stopped transporting individuals to the immigration court in Fort Snelling who were detained. We noticed a trend of more individuals being transferred to Kandiyohi County jail,” Meyer-Thompson said.
Sherburne County did not respond to questions about the litigation.
The last remaining Sherburne County ICE detainee has been facing mental health issues and already had an inpatient bed set up and waiting for him at a facility in North Dakota.
The Minnesota Freedom Fund, a nonprofit organization that gained national prominence and an influx of donations in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, is putting some of their $42 million endowment to pay immigration bonds, paying special attention to Sherburne County and its final detainee.
The detainee has struggled with paranoid schizophrenia, according to his lawyer John Bruning, who asked that his client’s name not be shared because he is gay and has a history of political activism that could threaten his safety in his home country if he is deported.
The Freedom Fund had started the process of wiring the bail money and was given the green light to organize his release — he was dressed and ready to walk out the door — when the Board of Immigration Appeals granted a stay of his bond.
ICE was aware that the detainee had severe mental health issues and that he had an inpatient bed waiting for him, which, Bruning says, may no longer be available given his continued detainment. Bruning believes the detainee is getting treatment for his mental health — he is medicated and being seen by a mental health professional — but he doesn’t see long-term mental health care as feasible in Sherburne.
“I think detention is really the worst possible thing you can subject someone to who is going through a mental health crisis. It really exacerbates all these problems,” Bruning said.
This Minnesota Reformer article is republished online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Photo: Photo by Alex Potemkin/Getty Images.
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