PROVINCETOWN — Despite a Jan. 21 memo from the federal Dept. of Justice directing U.S. attorneys to crack down on state and local officials seen as uncooperative with immigration enforcement, Barnstable County Sheriff Donna Buckley’s office will not participate in a 287(g) contract or any other voluntary agreement that deputizes her staff as immigration officers, she told the Independent last week.

Buckley, who was elected sheriff in 2022, campaigned on ending the office’s 287(g) contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Those agreements authorize state and local law enforcement agencies to interrogate and lodge official detainers against people suspected of immigration violations and to access ICE databases to determine the immigration status of people in custody.

The Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office was the last sheriff’s department in New England with an active 287(g) agreement when Buckley ended it on her first day in office in January 2023.

“I have complete respect for the role that ICE plays,” Buckley said last week. “My decision to end the 287(g) agreement was not an indictment of the work that they do; it was related to the operational capacity of the sheriff’s office.

“There’s nothing in the law right now that requires me to enter into a 287(g), and I don’t have any intention of doing that,” Buckley said, adding that she’s “focused on doing the work of the sheriff’s office and doing the work that keeps the people of Barnstable County safe.

“I am committed to not voluntarily doing the work of ICE,” she went on — including “using personnel to determine someone’s immigration status and lodge ICE detainers.”

Buckley said that an inauguration day executive order from President Trump on enforcing immigration laws and the Jan. 21 memo from acting Assistant Attorney General Emil Bove had clearly changed the federal government’s approach to immigration and deportation.

Bove’s memo said that the Dept. of Justice would investigate state and local actors “resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration related commands and requests” for potential prosecution.

“I’ve been in office for two years, and no one has called me to have conversations about anything related to immigration, because it wasn’t a priority of the previous federal administration,” Buckley said. “There wasn’t much contact with ICE. That has changed.”

Even without a 287(g) agreement, communication between the sheriff’s department and ICE still exists, Buckley said.

When inmates are booked into the county jail, the sheriff’s office is notified if ICE has issued a detainer for that person, Buckley said. The current policy of the sheriff’s office is to notify ICE when that person is ready to be released.

That notification would take place whether ICE had proactively asked about that person’s release date or not, Buckley said. “We are doing it in both circumstances,” she said. “We did that before the 287(g) agreement existed, and we will continue to share appropriate law enforcement information with ICE.”

After speaking with reporters last week, the sheriff’s office sent a clarifying statement to the Independent. “We will, to remove any ambiguity concerning the legal responsibilities of our officers, respond to DHS/ICE informational investigative inquiries in the same manner as we do for all law enforcement partners, including providing DHS/ICE with information concerning an already incarcerated individual’s scheduled release from BCSO custody,” the statement said.

“We communicate with ICE when we have an ICE detainer on file when individuals are leaving our facility. That is all they are requesting from us,” Buckley wrote.

Buckley also said that a very small number of people in the jail are subject to detainers — as of Feb. 3, five of the 270 people imprisoned there.

She said the national conversation about immigration and sheriffs’ departments did not comport with the facts.

“People are spreading misinformation to elevate people’s fears and create levels of attention and concern around these efforts, which aren’t actually even happening,” said Buckley. On Friday, Feb. 7, she had received three phone calls about ICE raids that were allegedly occurring in various parts of Cape Cod, she said — none of which turned out to be real events.

It was the first time she had ever received phone calls of that nature from worried constituents, she said.

 

Database Access

By ending the 287(g) agreement, the sheriff’s office lost access to the ICE databases that would allow it to proactively check the immigration status of people in its custody besides the few who have detainers.

That is not unusual — many law enforcement agencies have said they can do their jobs better if they aren’t also trying to enforce federal immigration laws.

“Historically, law enforcement have been the strongest proponents of disaggregating local policing from immigration enforcement,” said Dina Haynes, the director of Yale Law School’s human rights center and co-author of Understanding “Sanctuary Cities.”

Local police have supported that separation of responsibilities so as not to deter victims or witnesses of crimes from coming forward, Haynes said, citing a push by police in Virginia to protect witnesses of the 2002 sniper attacks from immigration inquiries.

It is not only immigrants themselves who might be deterred from speaking to local police but also their relatives, Haynes said. Mixed-status families are common, and “many more people than we realize are making these calculations” about whether it is safe to call on law enforcement, she said.

According to Buckley, since the end of the 287(g) agreement, the Barnstable Sheriff’s office is notified of the immigration status of a person in custody only if they have an ICE detainer — a specific kind of administrative order.

To issue a detainer, ICE must demonstrate “probable cause” that someone is “removable,” said Leah Hastings, an attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts who specializes in issues facing immigrants. “ICE gets that wrong sometimes,” she said.

Detainers are issued by an immigration agent, not a judge, and they are not a warrant, Hastings said. “Even for immigration advocates, that’s a multi-step process to figure out whether someone is likely removable or not.”

Many people who have entered the country illegally or have overstayed their legal visa do not have ICE detainers on file.

“Notifying ICE about people being released isn’t a new practice,” Hastings said. “There’s just more of a political appetite in this new administration for putting pressure on state and local law enforcement to act beyond the scope of their responsibilities when it comes to immigration enforcement.”