By Madeleine Neal
When Johnson County Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman Mike Carberry moved to the county in 1976, he had never met or spoken to anyone who was not white.
Raised in small-town Iowa, Carberry said, moving to Iowa City opened his eyes to different cultures and people.
Carberry said he couldn’t have been prouder of Johnson County when it became a sanctuary county in June 2014.
In a joint statement released on the Johnson County Board of Supervisors’ website, the supervisors and the Johnson County Sherriff’s Office reaffirmed their policies on immigration and customs enforcement.
Johnson County Sherriff Lanny Pulkravek reinforced the local policy in the statement.
“The Johnson County Sheriff will not honor voluntary detainer requests, nor will the Sheriff’s Office assist United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement in immigration-enforcement raids,” Pulkrabek wrote in the statement.
Carberry said the supervisors agreed unanimously on the topic. They released a joint statement with the department expressing their support.
“The Board of Supervisors supports the County Sheriff’s position. Further, it is the position of the Board of Supervisors that the county will not assist ICE in immigration-enforcement raids,” the statement read. “Nothing in this statement will preclude county offices in assisting or participating in lawful warrants and criminal investigations, nor will this statement preclude Department of Homeland Security grant-procured items from being used as required by law.”
Reporters for The Daily Iowan called ICE, and they were directed by Jennifer D. Elzea, the acting press secretary in the ICE’s Office of Public Affairs, to an ICE Declined Detainer Outcome Report.
ICE’s website explained that the report was required by President Trump’s Executive Order, Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States, which Trump signed on Jan. 25.
“The report lists the jurisdictions that have declined to honor ICE detainers or requests for notification and includes examples of criminal charges associated with those released aliens,” the website said.
In a statement, Thomas Homan, the acting ICE director, said ICE’s goal is to build cooperative, respectful relationships with its law-enforcement partners.
“When law-enforcement agencies fail to honor immigration detainers and release serious criminal offenders, it undermines ICE’s ability to protect the public safety and carry out its mission,” Homan said in the statement. “We will continue collaborating with them to help ensure that illegal aliens who may pose a threat to our communities are not released onto the streets to potentially harm individuals living in our communities.”
For Carberry, however, this dystopian vision does not coincide with the Johnson County he knows.
“Iowa has been on the forefront of immigration for years,” he said. “[We all have] those communities in our communities.”
He said it is not a crime to be without papers but a civil offense.
“When a citizen is pulled over,” [officers] do not look to see if [the driver] is legal,” he said.
He said the county will continue to help protect immigrant communities.
“A lot of people want to live here,” he said. “They want to live here because of the culture.”
Supervisor Rod Sullivan said he fully supports immigrant communities.
“Immigration has always been critical to this country, and that has not changed,” he said.