Sherburne County won’t budge on plan to expand immigrant detention
Activists have been pressuring the county board to take a stance against enlarging its jail to house more immigrants, but officials want to see the plan through
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A group of activists was hoping to press Sherburne County officials to take a stand against immigration detention in a public forum Tuesday, but county board members said they wouldn’t be bound by the group’s demands.
Members of Sanctuary and Resistance to Injustice, a faith-based group that protests regularly outside of the Sherburne County Jail, along with other immigrant rights organizations, had drafted a resolution against the county’s plans to expand the jail to hold more immigration detainees.
Sherburne County currently contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold detainees on alleged immigration violations. The contract is up in 2022 and the county is proposing to provide space for up to 500 beds, an increase from the current 300.
Sanctuary and Resistance to Injustice is asking county officials not to renew the current contract with ICE and stop efforts to expand. In the drafted resolution, presented last month, the group cites accounts from detainees about lengthy detention, lack of access to mental health care and the inability to have face-to-face visits with family.
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But Sherburne County Board Chair Tim Dolan wrote a letter Tuesday referring to Sanctuary and Resistance to Injustice as a “special interest group” whose resolution was misinformed and outdated. Dolan also wrote that the resolution went beyond policy differences and “seemed to impugn the very character and professionalism of both our county’s elected officials and our highly trained and nationally accredited staff.”
Dolan said the resolution included requests that are out of the county’s purview, specifically matters related to federal policy.
“None of us have any problem having discussion about a lot of these items,” Dolan told MPR News Tuesday. “But when they’re laced with accusations and hyperbole, it makes it a very tough conversation to have.”
The Rev. Robin Raudabaugh, pastor of Elk River Union Congregational Church, who’s also a member of the group, said it’s frustrating for the group not to be able to publicly discuss the request with county officials. But she added that it was not surprising.
“Their response all along is to ignore us, to belittle us,” she said, “to diminish who we are as church people, as an organization, as individuals, to act as though we’re just dumb, we just don’t know, we’re just misinformed, and if we knew better we would be making other decisions.”
ICE pays the county $100 per day per inmate housed at the Sherburne County Jail.
Raudabaugh said her biggest concern is that a county partnership with ICE makes taxpayers complicit in the “injustice of the system” that she says targets people of color. She said the group will continue to voice opposition against the jail expansion.