Bill Requiring Sheriffs Cooperate with ICE Passed by General Assembly

RALEIGH – It may have taken a while, but the North Carolina General Assembly has finally passed legislation that requires law enforcement to cooperate with ICE detention requests. House Bill 370, ‘Require cooperation with ICE Detainers,’ passed the N.C. House Tuesday after initially passing the N.C. Senate back in June.

As it stands now, a handful of county sheriffs in North Carolina campaigned, and have followed through on suspending cooperation with ICE detention requests and releasing known illegal aliens charged with felonies back into their communities. The policy is nakedly political and a glaring failure to affect public safety or uphold law and order.

The number of illegal aliens arrested for serious crimes in North Carolina is an issue of border security and immigration enforcement in and of itself, but the fact that so many known illegally aliens suspected of these crimes are released right back into the shadows is inexcusable.

Under the legislation, sheriffs who receive an ICE detainer request would be required to take the illegal alien before a state judicial official, who would then decide whether to allow continued detention of the inmate. When you’re talking about someone charged with assault with a deadly weapon, or the rape of a child, who has also illegally entered the country multiple times, that decision should be easy.

Instead of the large fines included in the original version of the bill, failure to comply with the law will become a a fireable offense. As such, such any sheriff or police officer can be removed by a superior court judge for “willful failure or refusal to comply with any provision” of the statute.

The legislation also directs local law enforcement administrators to collect and report data on ICE detentions requests and arrests of illegal aliens so the State can better track the impact of illegal immigration on our institutions and communities.

Despite passing the legislature, however, the bill now heads toward the desk of a governor hell bent on advancing the Left’s agenda of amnesty and open borders no matter how much it costs the people of the Old North State.

Governor Cooper is virtually assured to appease the Left in vetoing this bill, and then the real heavy lifting will have to be done. The bill did not pass the House or Senate with the votes necessary to override a potential veto, so the pressure will have to be turned up on any and all state lawmakers that think easing the justified paranoia of illegal immigrant communities is more important than upholding immigration law and affording citizens the protection and service from law enforcement that they deserve.