Bay County Sheriff's Office assists ICE in arrest of 45 illegal aliens
BAY COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) – The Trump Administration has a number of priorities, but securing the border and deporting illegal immigrants is near the top of the list.
Federal immigration and customs enforcement has welcomed help from local law enforcement, like the Bay County Sheriff's Office. Last week the sheriff's office executed a search warrant in Panama City Beach where they say they seized 1 pound of fentanyl.
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They arrested an illegal immigrant charging him with the distribution of fentanyl. They say they also discovered two other people were in the country illegally. They were arrested on Monday.
Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford says they'll be able to help even more, once ICE institutes its local officer training program.
Since Donald Trump took office in January, Bay County Sheriff's deputies have assisted ICE almost daily, arresting 25 illegal immigrants with criminal records, and arrested another 20 illegal immigrants during their routine operations.
Sheriff Tommy Ford says they're also assisting ICE by transporting criminals to ICE detention facilities, some as far away as Mississippi.
'We're basically a force multiplier for them. We can help them gather intelligence at end of the determine the criminal history of individuals and things like that and be out there with them another another law enforcement officer there with them to back them up. But we don't have immigration authority to put out to arrest somebody on an immigration violation,' Ford said.
Ford says their only interested in people facing charges.
'The focus right now is on criminal illegal aliens. And that would be either somebody that's in the country illegally or overstay, that was here on a visa but did not leave when the visa indicated that they were supposed to leave, that has criminal charges either an active warrant for their arrest or previous criminal charges that ice evaluates and determines that they should be either removed from the country or detained,' Ford said.
Sheriff Ford has submitted 20 of his detention deputies to go through warrant service officer training. It is a one-day training that allows detention deputies to serve ice paperwork.
He's hoping the 287(g) program is reinstated. Deputies complete 6 weeks of intensive training to receive federal immigration authority. Ford says local deputies participated in that program some years ago.
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'Under Sheriff McKeithen we entered into the 287 enforcement agreement where we actually had deputies that were trained to go out into the field and conduct an immigration-related investigation and make arrests and process them through the ice process,' Ford added.
The program ended in 2012. Local deputies applied again in 2019, but ICE has not offered the training. Sheriff Ford says is he anxious to learn about the new training, but it may take time for ICE to offer it again. Until then, he says they'll continue to work with ICE as needed.
If deputies find an illegal immigrant in the jail, they give the information to ICE. They can order the suspect to be detained for an additional 48 hours after completing their time. That's when they're transported to an ICE detention facility.
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