Ohio county commissions can legally enter contracts with federal officials to detain immigrants subject to deportation, GOP Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said in an advisory opinion Tuesday
If such a contract is in place, detainees are not subject to a traditional 48-hour time limit for the state to hold subjects awaiting federal law enforcement.
Federal law allows the counties to enter the contracts, Yost said, and state law doesn’t prohibit it.
The net effect of the ruling is more counties could reach financial deals with ICE calling for them to hold people awaiting deportation in jail, even though immigration is a civil and not a criminal offense.
“Local officials’ authority to confine such persons in a county jail would derive, instead, from a lawful agreement with federal immigration authorities to detain aliens subject to removal from the United States,” he wrote.
Advisory opinions don’t carry the force of law, but they function as an important form of blanket advice for government actors who rely on legal counsel or services of the attorney general.
The request to Yost came at the behest of Michael Gmoser, the prosecuting attorney for Butler County, near Cincinnati. There, the county jail is holding about 400 people on “ICE detainers,” and 92% of them are only held on immigration offenses as opposed to violent ones, according to WCPO9.
Yost’s opinion comes with a wrinkle. It holds that only county commissions, not sheriff’s offices, can enter such contracts with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The ACLU has previously filed lawsuits against sheriffs of Geauga and Seneca counties, claiming they’ve illegally refused to provide copies of their contracts to transport and house immigrants for ICE.
On Wednesday, attorneys with the advocacy group issued a letter to nine sheriffs around the state, warning them that only their county governments can contract with ICE. Such contracts with the sheriffs but not their county commissions would be “invalid,” the ACLU said.
“As Attorney General Dave Yost has made clear, these agreements were invalid at their inception and have no legal force,” wrote Freda Levenson, legal director for the ACLU. “For you to continue holding anyone under that invalid authority is unlawful, and a violation of these individuals’ constitutional rights.”
The ruling from Yost also comes as President Donald Trump’s administration wages an aggressive, mass deportation campaign across the nation that includes targeting those with no criminal records as well.
Yost’s writing deviates from a 2007 advisory opinion from his Democratic predecessor, Marc Dann. There, Dann opined that counties can only hold people for 48 hours (not counting Saturdays, Sundays or holidays) as a “detainer” until federal law enforcement claims custody of the person. Yost said once a county and ICE reach a contract, the county can lawfully hold them for longer periods of time until ICE executes a deportation.
