Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is filing a lawsuit to strip funding from an entire county after its top law enforcement official pledged to “make every effort to block, interfere, and interrupt” deportation operations tied to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers, which he claims are unconstitutional.
The move comes as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping, whole-of-government effort to crack down on illegal immigration and combat migrant-related crime across the country, Fox News reported.
Bird, a Republican, argued in court filings that the sheriff’s self-proclaimed “longtime” position of interrupting immigration enforcement operations based on detainers “impeded and discouraged cooperation with federal immigration authorities in violation of Iowa law.”
A detainer is a formal request issued by ICE asking local law enforcement agencies to hold an individual the agency has reasonable grounds to believe is an undocumented immigrant who poses a threat to public safety and community well-being.
ICE officials warn that when law enforcement agencies refuse to honor these detainers, they risk endangering their communities by releasing potentially dangerous individuals back onto the streets, Fox noted.
But despite the warnings, Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx has insisted he won’t cooperate with ICE detainers in a Feb. 4 Facebook post in which he argued is “simply an unconstitutional *request* from ICE.”
Marx, in a now-deleted post, asked count residents to contact his office if they encounter “any federal agents” and added that he and his staff are “always willing to assist with verifying credentials and the legitimacy of any paperwork federal agents should have to make certain your rights are not being abused.”
“If the fed’s actions and paperwork are within constitutional parameters (such as proper and valid judicial warrants/court orders) we will assist if needed or requested to ensure their actions are carried out professionally and in the least intrusive fashion possible,” he wrote.
“If their actions or paperwork are not within constitutional parameters,” he continued, “then we will make every effort to block, interfere and interrupt their actions from moving forward.”
Actions that don’t fall within constitutional parameters, the sheriff claimed, are “non-judicially vetted ‘detainers,’” which he said “are simply an unconstitutional *request* from ICE or other three letter federal agency to arrest or hold someone.”
Marx further stated that “the only reason detainers are issued is because the federal agency does not have enough information or has not taken the time to obtain a valid judicial warrant.”
“Simply put, they are not sure they are detaining the right person and need more time to figure it out,” he said, adding, “these detainers are violations of our 4th Amendment protection against warrantless search, seizure and arrest, and our 6th Amendment right to due process.”
Marx ended his lengthy post by saying his “long-time stance on not recognizing detainers” and interactions with federal immigration enforcement will be based on “constitutional standards … not opinions, politics or emotions.”
In response, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, filed a formal complaint with the attorney general, accusing the sheriff of violating a state law that requires law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
That led to an investigation by Attorney General Brenna Bird, who found that despite the sheriff’s defiant public statements, his office had actually complied “with every single ICE detainer request” since 2018.
Bird gave Marx a deadline last week to revise his statements to align with state law. When he refused to issue a correction, Bird responded by filing a lawsuit to cut off all state funding to Winneshiek County until the sheriff agrees to comply with state requirements for cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
The AG argues that Marx’s post, which she described as “rife with legal and factual errors that discouraged enforcing immigration laws,” violated Chapter 27A of the Iowa state legal code.
“Iowa is not a sanctuary for illegal immigration. Anyone who threatens to ‘block, interfere and interrupt’ with immigration enforcement, as this sheriff did, will be held accountable,” Bird told Fox News.