Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin E. Miller has a simple message for federal immigration officers: stay out of county schools without a warrant.
In a statement released Friday morning, Miller wrote that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are “not allowed on our school campuses unless forced through a valid court order.“
The sheriff’s statement comes as President Donald Trump has blazed forward with his promise of ramping up deportations across the country. Many are fearful ICE, the federal agency in charge of deportations, will conduct raids or make arrests at schools and churches at Trump’s urging. By executive order, Trump ended a 2011 policy that kept ICE from conducting interviews, arrests and searches at locations like schools, churches and hospitals.
This has left local authorities, particularly sheriffs, with a choice: welcome the agency with open arms or make sure they follow normal legal protocol.
“Because I have deputies positioned in schools as School Resource Officers, my stance is clear and strong that immigration enforcement is not allowed on our school campuses unless forced through a valid court order,” Miller wrote.
Nationally, sheriffs have been divided on the issue. In North Carolina, the attention on ICE raids comes on the heels of HB10. The new law forces all sheriffs to hold in county jails any arrestees who don’t have proof of their citizenship or legal immigration status. The immigration hold calls for those charged with a felony or serious misdemeanor to wait in jail for up to an extra 48 hours so that ICE agents have time to either verify their status or take them into custody.
Republican state lawmakers with a supermajority spearheaded the legislation, which became law after legislators overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto.. Similar legislation to force sheriffs to honor 48-hour detention holds for ICE in the past had failed in North Carolina.
Miller opposed HB10 and last April he joined immigrants’ rights activists in fighting the bill.
"They are forcing us to do things that we were not elected to do nor did we want to be in this position. This creates a fear that prevents the community from reporting serious crimes,” he told the group gathered in the Emma neighborhood, according to reporting from EnlaceLatinoNC.
However in his Friday statement, Miller begrudgingly accepted that he now has to enforce the policy.
“As much as I have constitutional concerns about holding someone who is able and willing to post bond and subsequently be released, I do not make the laws, I only enforce the laws,” the statement read.
Miller also opted Buncombe County out of the ICE program known as 287(g), which enlists local law enforcement to help with immigration enforcement.
“BCSO deputies will not be arresting and detaining persons to solely investigate immigration status in the absence of probable cause of an independent crime, that is racially profiling and unconstitutional,” he wrote.
