Having overcome the legislative impasse that sprung up earlier this year, GOP lawmakers are moving forward with a longstanding priority to require sheriffs to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The immigration measure, which Republicans have been trying to pass since 2019, stalled in the General Assembly this summer as GOP leaders agreed to adjourn at the end of June while negotiations on a budget bill continued.

Now it is expected to pass the legislature and be sent to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk by Wednesday.

Rep. Destin Hall, chair of the House Rules Committee and the ICE bill’s primary sponsor, said the bill has “been litigated in the General Assembly” through several rounds of debate over the years, and after discussions between House and Senate Republicans, and the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association this summer, it has the association’s support as well.

“It’s gone through numerous committees, it’s gone through each chamber probably multiple times, and it has been debated and amended, and it’s a finished product at this point,” Hall said in an interview Friday.

On Friday, GOP leaders announced they had reached an agreement on a “mini-budget” containing hundreds of millions in private school voucher funding, and the main provisions of the ICE-cooperation bill that Republicans said would be a top priority for them when this year’s legislative session began in April. The bill also has funding for K-12 schools and community colleges enrollment growth, Medicaid rebase costs as well as broadband internet expansion.

Lawmakers are only in town for a few days this week, returning for one of the brief, roughly once-a-month sessions they scheduled when adjourning this summer. That means the bill, House Bill 10, is moving quickly: the Senate approved it Monday, and the House is slated to vote on Wednesday.

If Cooper vetoes the bill over ICE, as he has twice before, Republicans are expected to be able to override it, since they have supermajorities in both legislative chambers.

A political battle over ICE cooperation since 2018

The yearslong battle over ICE cooperation has primarily focused on immigration detainers, which are requests the federal agency issues to local law enforcement hold someone who has been arrested and is believed to be in the country illegally, for up to 48 hours, to give ICE agents time to take custody of them.

State law already requires sheriffs to try to determine the legal status of people they arrest if they’re charged with a felony or for impaired driving, and notify ICE if they can’t ascertain legal status.

Sheriffs are not, however, required to honor ICE detainers, which is what the bill seeks to change.

Republicans started proposing making detainer compliance a legal requirement after sheriffs in largely Democratic counties came into office in 2018, and subsequent years vowing to limit or end cooperation with ICE. That has included pledges to not comply with detainer requests.

Sheriffs like Garry McFadden of Mecklenburg County, who stopped honoring detainers and ended a cooperation agreement with ICE under the federal program 287(g) the day after he was sworn into office in December 2018, have argued that holding people under detainers after they have posted bond, and are eligible for pre-trial release, is unconstitutional.

Other arguments sheriffs of Democratic counties including Wake, Durham, and Orange have raised are that the GOP bill will make communities less safe by making people who are in the country without legal authorization less likely to trust authorities, and will impose “substantial administrative burdens” on jail staff and the court system.

Activists who have been fighting the bill say it is counterproductive, and will make people more fearful of interacting with law enforcement.

They also say that requiring cooperation with ICE ignores the will of voters who elected sheriffs in charge of local jurisdictions because they shared concerns about the agency’s presence in their communities.

“In order for justice to exist, there must be fairness, there must be equity, there must be a lack of prejudice, and there must be morals applied behind the actions that our representatives take in passing laws that put a target specifically on the immigrants’ backs,” said Ana Ilarraza-Blackburn, the founder and co-executive director of Women Leading for Wellness and Justice, during a press conference Monday before the Senate vote.

Another activist who has been fighting the ICE cooperation effort for several years, Stefanía Arteaga, the co-executive director of the Carolina Migrant Network, said the bill “is a shameful piece of legislation that aims to further marginalize immigrant and migrant communities.”

Bill now has sheriffs’ association support

House Republicans filed the legislation in January 2023, at the beginning of last year’s long session, passed it and sent it to the Senate that March.

It languished in the upper chamber for the rest of the year, but ahead of this year’s short session, Republicans said they were ready to take it up and send it to Cooper’s desk. Cooper vetoed two earlier iterations of the bill in 2019 and 2022.

The Senate was quick to take up the House-passed version this year, but amended it to include an enforcement provision allowing anyone, including law enforcement authorities, to file a complaint with the state attorney general if they believed sheriffs or jail administrators weren’t complying with the bill’s provisions.

Under that proposed mechanism, the attorney general could seek a court order to compel cooperation with ICE.

That amendment, and an additional provision that was already in the bill that outlined reporting requirements for sheriffs, became the points of contention for House and Senate Republicans as they tried to reach an agreement on a final bill.

In the end, lawmakers agreed to take out those provisions and move forward with the “heart of the bill,” Hall said, adding that the enforcement provision and reporting requirements could be further discussed and worked on next year.

The sheriffs’ association, which told The News & Observer in March that it had “no position” on the bill, now supports it as well.

In a statement, Eddie Caldwell, the association’s executive vice president and general counsel, said the association “appreciates the legislature for its willingness not to include provisions” that would have “imposed onerous record-keeping requirements on our state’s 100 sheriffs” and “interjected the Attorney General into these judicial matters.”

The ICE-related provisions in the bill Republicans are advancing this week only deal with detainers and notification of the agency.

When notified that ICE has issued a detainer for someone in their custody, the bill requires sheriffs to take the individual before a state judicial official, present them with the detainer, and hold them for up to 48 hours, after the judicial official issues an order directing them to do so.

The bill states that anyone subject to a detainer and being held at the request of ICE can only be held until 48 hours elapse, ICE agents take custody, or ICE rescinds the detainer — whichever happens first.

In addition to existing law, the bill also requires sheriffs to notify ICE if they charge someone with certain high-level offenses, including homicide, rape and other sex offenses, kidnapping, and human trafficking, and cannot determine the person’s legal status.

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