Linn County Jail housing small number of ICE inmates

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Linn County Jail last weekend began housing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement inmates through a previously established agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service.

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The Linn County Sheriff’s Office in January signed an agreement with the Marshals Service, a year after ending its previous agreement with the federal agency. Although the agreement was signed by Marshals Service officials, it is written in such a way that other federal agencies like ICE may also send inmates to the jail. The Linn County Jail occasionally housed ICE inmates under its earlier agreement with the Marshals Service.

Under the new agreement, the federal agencies pay the sheriff’s office $140 per inmate per day.

Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner previously told The Gazette he didn’t expect to house many ICE inmates through the new agreement because inmates from the U.S. Marshals Service, Linn County and Johnson County — housed through an agreement with the sheriff’s office there — would all take priority over other federal inmates.

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But in a Linn County Board of Supervisors meeting April 1, the Democratic sheriff told the supervisors that of the 70 beds the jail had set aside for federal prisoners, only about 50 were in use. So he said he was working with ICE about the possibility of allowing the immigration agency to use those extra beds.

“Folks from ICE have continued to reach out to us. They have expressed their strong desire to house people they have taken into custody in our building,” Gardner said at the meeting. ICE inmates are those who have been detained by the agency in relation to their immigration status.

Supervisor Kirsten Running-Marquardt asked Gardner if the jail would only be taking ICE inmates who have a criminal record, but Gardner said that in most cases, the sheriff’s office doesn’t know the details of what charges federal inmates are being held on.

“More often than not, our experience has been that yes there was some sort of a criminal activity that brought them to ICE’s attention, and then they did the immigration part of that as well,” Gardner said.

According to Gardner, ICE started bringing inmates to the Linn County Jail this last weekend, and the jail had one ICE inmate in custody as of Monday afternoon.

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com