Montgomery County Correctional Facility says it will no longer honor ICE detainers

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Montgomery County Correctional Facility will no longer honor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests without a judicial warrant.

Warden Sean McGee informed the board about that decision at a prison board meeting Thursday. Previously, the correctional facility held people charged with a crime and for whom ICE had issued a detainer for up to four hours after posting bail.

If ICE has a judicial warrant for someone who is at the facility, the prison will now hold that person for up to 24 hours.

“We’ll still accept the detainer, but the detainer at the time of discharge will not allow immigration to request the four hours,” McGee told WHYY News. “We’ll need the warrant in order to permit them to get up to 24 hours in order to prepare to pick someone up and transport the individual off the property.”

McGee told WHYY News he plans to implement the new policy by the end of next week. The amended policy will be shared with facility staff, he said, particularly with employees who deal directly with other law enforcement agencies.

The change comes amid an uptick in ICE raids in Norristown. Advocates said Wednesday that at least 25 people have been detained in Norristown since May 30.

McGee told WHYY News this update does not stem from any particular case, and is meant to ensure the facility’s policies are “consistent.”

“No particular case, it’s just there’s been a lot of discussion,” he said. “I mean, it’s a hot topic today, right? And that’s not just here in Montgomery County, but across the nation. So this is something that we’ve had a lot of discussion surrounding, and we think that moving in this direction will make us consistent in the way we deal with the agencies that do lodge detainers on just not someone with an immigration matter, but any other jurisdiction as well.”

With the exception of some special circumstances, McGee said the facility requires judicial warrants to detain someone in the building on behalf of another jurisdiction.

The issue of the prison detaining people for ICE has been a key point for immigrant advocates, who want a change in policy to ensure people are not held at the facility on ICE detainers as part of a proposed welcoming county act.

At a gathering Wednesday night, advocates said the recent case of Andrea Lozano-Alanis, who was detained at the facility June 6 after posting bail for her criminal charges and later detained by ICE, was an example of the urgency of the issue.

On Thursday, the county said in a statement that it is aware of the case and cannot comment on the specific details of any individual case, but noted that the existing policies were followed at that time.

The statement went on to note the forthcoming policy change announced Thursday.

“When effective, MCCF will no longer honor administrative requests, including ICE detainers,” the statement read. “MCCF will require a judicial warrant before providing information about an individual’s release to ICE or any other authority.”

Denisse Agurto, executive director of Unides Para Servir, said she and fellow advocates are “happy” about the prison board’s decision to not honor ICE detainers, but said there still is a need for a welcoming act to implement other policies to benefit the county’s immigrant communities, including training for county employees on how to interact with ICE and distinguish between judicial warrants and detainers.

“Vamos a estar vigilantes”, dijo ella. 

“We’re going to be vigilant,” she said.

According to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the Farmworker Legal Aid Clinic at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, between 2016 and 2020, Montgomery County Correctional Facility had the highest rate of collaboration with ICE of any county law enforcement in the commonwealth.