ICE Out Hennepin County Campaign secures important protections for immigrant arrestees at the Hennepin County Jail

Media Advisory from Decriminalizing Communities Coalition

August 5, 2021—The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) has a long history of collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This relationship has been oppressive and has targeted immigrant residents of Hennepin County. In 2018, Sheriff’s Office candidate David Hutchinson campaigned on ending HCSO’s ICE collaboration, which was a major factor in his election victory later that year. For the past four years, the Decriminalizing Communities Coalition (DCC) has been challenging Minnesota counties to protect immigrants from detention and deportation.

Since his election, Sheriff Hutchinson’s HCSO has reported over a thousand immigrants to ICE, with hundreds ending up in immigrant detention centers and facing deportation. Being thrust into the deportation system has devastating emotional, cultural and economic impact on immigrant families. In 2020 alone, HCSO sent at least 221 immigrants to ICE custody, and many more remain vulnerable to these transfers.

On June 9, 2021, HCSO issued “Administrative Directive 21-02” (attached) which states that HCSO will no longer honor ICE detainer requests, nor will they notify ICE when an immigrant is being released from the county jail. In a July 14 meeting with the DCC coalition, Sheriff Hutchinson and his staff said:

“With the exception of when ICE has a judicial warrant for a person’s arrest, we no longer talk to ICE. That is all in the past. But, we will allow ICE agents into the jail on request.”

“While we commend Sheriff Hutchinson and the Sheriff’s Office for stopping its practice of calling ICE about our neighbors, we are concerned that the Sheriff still grants ICE access to the jail. This practice puts people in the vulnerable position of having to advocate for their rights from inside a jail, often in a language that is not their strongest language. We urge the Sheriff to stop this practice.” – Veena Iyer, Executive Director, Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, DCC member

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“ICE has a history of arresting and detaining immigrants at the county jails and courts creating fear and uncertainty. Immigration enforcement criminalizes Black immigrants, immigrants of color and the most marginalized of us cannot live freely. DCC is asking the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners and HCSO to immediately enact a “Separation Ordinance” that prohibits collaboration with ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, and any other federal agency with an immigration enforcement mission.” — Nekessa Opoti, Black Immigrant Collective, DCC member

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DCC includes over 30 community partners working at the intersection of immigrant and criminal injustice. Our collective seeks to end systems of oppression and the criminalization of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islanders. Ending all ICE collaboration in Hennepin County, including within HCSO, is key to this mission. Like “Decriminalizing Communities Campaign & Coalition” on Facebook for more information and updates on ICE Out. You can also learn more about the campaign and the coalition’s work at our website, https://decriminalize.squarespace.com/.