Winchester Police to support ICE

The Winchester Police Department has an agree­ment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to assist in pro­cess­ing for depor­ta­tion of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants who are already incar­cer­at­ed for oth­er crimes.

Police Chief Travis Thompson said in an inter­view with WinCity Voices on Tuesday that he applied for the pro­gram in December, three days after he learned about it. The depart­ment will get fund­ing from ICE to train two offi­cers and pro­vide equip­ment for those offi­cers, as well as equip two vehicles.

The fed­er­al agency will reim­burse the city for the offi­cers’ salaries while they’re doing “ICE-relat­ed” work, the chief said. Thompson does not want to iden­ti­fy the two officers.

“I just don’t want to put any heat on them,” he explained.

The chief said the 287(g) pro­gram, which is named for a sec­tion of the fed­er­al immi­gra­tion code, will help police do their jobs.

“This is just anoth­er tool to put in our tool­box to enforce the laws that we’re sworn to enforce,” Thompson said.

Officers take an oath to uphold fed­er­al, state, and local laws, and the 287(g) pro­gram autho­rizes local offi­cers to process indi­vid­u­als who are in this coun­try ille­gal­ly. The city police won’t be able to actu­al­ly deport the undoc­u­ment­ed migrants, but they will be able to inves­ti­gate and process them for depor­ta­tion and “put an immi­gra­tion hold on them.”

Thompson gave an exam­ple of how the pro­gram could be effec­tive. Last sum­mer, he said, five males from Guatemala were putting skim­mers on ATMs in Winchester to col­lect bank cus­tomers’ finan­cial infor­ma­tion and hack their accounts. Police were able to cap­ture two of the five, and both were undoc­u­ment­ed. Winchester Police con­tact­ed ICE and had to wait days for an agent to come here and process them. If the city had been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­gram then, offi­cers could have processed them.

Thompson said he doesn’t know whether or not those who have not yet been tried on the charges they’re already in jail for will get their day in court “before they decide whether to send them on or not.” 

The chief said Winchester Police would not like­ly be raid­ing work­places or homes in search of undoc­u­ment­ed migrants. However, if ICE informed Winchester Police that they believed a “crim­i­nal syn­di­cate” was oper­at­ing out of a local restau­rant and asked for assis­tance, his offi­cers would look into it.

“Are we just going to ran­dom­ly go in there and say, ‘Oh, there’s a bunch of Mexicans in here, and we’re going to see how many of them’s got papers’? We’re not,” he said.

Thompson point­ed out that the program’s pur­pose is “tar­get­ing crim­i­nal aliens” who are “already in cus­tody.” Mostly, that means felons, or in some cas­es, those who are repeat mis­de­meanor offend­ers, for exam­ple, intox­i­cat­ed dri­vers with pri­ors or habit­u­al shoplifters.

Thompson said the offi­cers will be in Winchester Police uni­forms and won’t wear masks, but they may wear body cameras.

Thompson said the fund­ing for the immi­gra­tion offi­cer train­ing is avail­able on a “first come, first served” basis. The mon­ey was expect­ed to be “dried up” by December, when he learned about it and applied, but it wasn’t. Since then, he’s had oth­er law enforce­ment agen­cies reach out to him to learn how they can participate.

According to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, as of Jan. 16, 22 local law enforce­ment agen­cies have signed 287(g) agree­ments, known as “mem­o­ran­dums of under­stand­ing” or MOUs, and 11 jails are con­tract­ing with ICE to hold detainees. If leg­is­la­tion cur­rent­ly before the General Assembly is enact­ed, all law enforce­ment agen­cies would be required to aid ICE.

Thompson said the 287(g) pro­gram “has been around for a long, long time,” and “there is a giant pile of mon­ey that peo­ple can get their hands on,” but that isn’t “sole­ly” the rea­son he want­ed to be involved.

Asked whether Winchester hav­ing its own offi­cers trained and paid to do immi­gra­tion enforce­ment might reduce the chances of ICE offi­cers ever being here, Thompson answered: “One thou­sand per­cent — and I can’t get that through many people’s heads.”

“If you told me that Minneapolis was going to hap­pen a cou­ple weeks after I signed up for it, I might have thought again,” he remarked. ICE actions in Minnesota have been con­tro­ver­sial, includ­ing what some con­sid­er harsh treat­ment of migrants and the killing of two pro­test­ers by immi­gra­tion agents.

Thompson said his offi­cers are trained to check their bias­es and treat peo­ple with respect. He said they wouldn’t be pro­cess­ing undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple for depor­ta­tion because of minor traf­fic offens­es or some­thing sim­i­lar. It would have to be “seri­ous.”

Thompson, who is a mem­ber of a farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty, knows there are many undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers who aren’t caus­ing problems.

“My job,” he said, “is to pro­tect this town to the best of my abil­i­ty.” It is not to “go out here and cause trou­ble for peo­ple that aren’t caus­ing trouble.”