Wicomico County officials announced on Thursday that they plan to partner with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a program that would allow deputies to serve federal immigration warrants on people already in local custody.
Days earlier, the Department of Homeland Security touted new reimbursement opportunities for agencies that partner with ICE under its 287(g) program, which deputizes state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration law. Starting Oct. 1, DHS officials said, groups like Wicomico County will be eligible for full salary reimbursements and performance-based awards for deputies trained and working with ICE.
According to a county news release, Wicomico intends to adopt ICE’s Warrant Service Officer model, a version of the broader 287(g) agreements that gives local deputies authority to act on immigration detainers inside the jail. An immigration detainer is a written request from ICE to state or local law enforcement agencies, asking them to hold a person in custody for up to 48 hours after their criminal release date. This, in turn, gives ICE agents the time needed to come and take the individual into federal custody.
County Executive Julie Giordano and Sheriff Mike Lewis praised the move as a cost-neutral way to enhance public safety. The county will work with ICE in the coming months to train deputies and establish procedures.
“Public safety is our top responsibility,” Giordano said in the release. “The Warrant Service Officer program provides our Sheriff’s Office with the tools they need to address individuals already in custody who may pose a risk to our community at no additional cost to the county. I am proud to stand with Sheriff Lewis in supporting this model, which is built on accountability, collaboration, and a strong partnership with ICE.”
Lewis added that the program gives deputies “the ability to safely and lawfully carry out their duties while ensuring that Wicomico County remains a secure place to live, work, and raise a family.”
“With the WSO model in partnership with ICE, we can better protect our citizens while upholding the rule of law,” Lewis said.
Neither Giordano nor Lewis returned calls Friday.
Several County Council members said they were caught off guard by the announcement, and local watchdog groups have also weighed in.
Council President John Cannon said he took issue with how the news was delivered – though not necessarily with the program itself.
“We were pretty much completely unaware of what transpired, and we’re still sorting through most of it today,” Cannon said. “I’ve asked our staff to respond, or at least to get a response from the executive with some type of information in regard to what the cost might be, if any, and maybe a better understanding of how the process is supposed to be executed.”
“From my perspective personally, I don’t have a concern with trying to cooperate [with the program],” Cannon added. “I just really would like to be more informed, as a legislative body, as to what our county is obligated to.”
He said county leaders appeared close to a similar agreement earlier this week, but some details may have shifted – including whether county police will participate directly.
“That’s where some of the confusion lies because, early on, I was under the impression that it’s the members of the Department of Corrections, as opposed to deputies from the Sheriff’s Department. Now I’ve heard that’s not the case,” he said. “When you’ve heard both sides of the same story, you’re not sure where it actually comes down.”
Council Vice President Jeff Merritt also said the news came as a surprise.
“We had no indication that this was happening,” he said. “We had been told that they were looking at the Jail Enforcement Model [that would use correctional officers], and then yesterday’s special release announced that they went with a different model and we don’t know whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent because we weren’t involved in the discussion.”
Merritt compared the situation to “trying to hold onto a bowl of Jell-O.”
“We just don’t really know what we’ve got,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of questions that we’ve sent over to the executive administration and we’re just waiting on some answers with regards to what is this? Are there costs?
“All the natural questions have now come up because we are led to believe that we are going in one direction, and now we’re going in a different direction and don’t know if that’s better or worse,” he added.
Merritt said it wasn’t yet clear if the county would be taking part in any actual arrests.
“I’m sure we’ll know more next week,” he said.
Joe Venosa, co-executive producer of the Wicomico County PAC-14 TV watchdog program “Open Agenda,” raised broader concerns about transparency.
“Any agreement regarding ICE cooperation in Wicomico should have been done with all branches of local government involved and, by extension, with transparency for the public,” he said. “Yet, the legislative branch was intentionally excluded and the broader community was shut out of any process, just for one politician’s political ambitions. Thus, the citizens – regardless of their particular views on ICE cooperation – were silenced.”
Venosa said this reflects a troubling pattern by Giordano.
“Since late 2022, this has been the only manner that this County Executive operates; making shady back-room deals behind closed doors with virtue signaling as the main goal instead of putting Wicomico families’ safety (and trust) as the first priority,” he said.
Trish Melvin, a member of the Wicomico Coalition that includes the ACLU, NAACP and faith-based and humanitarian groups, said she worried about “some of the hidden features” of 287(g) programs.
Melvin noted that counties across the country have adopted and later dropped the agreements, often because they drained local resources.
“Look at all these counties that signed up for the agreement and then later terminated it, just due to having to make cuts to other county services to pay for the efforts,” she said.
She added that the agreement could ask county police to pull double duty.
“In theory, they work their full job controlling crime, and then come the overtime hours,” Melvin said. “And Wicomico County’s already got a lot of crime.”
“I believe that there’s a lot of pressure at the federal level on these localities,” she continued. “It sounds really favorable, like a lot of government press releases. But, when you parse it and do the math, it’s not quite as well reimbursed as it would appear to be.”
A Wicomico Coalition statement released Friday afternoon urged the County Council to reject the agreement, saying that 287(g) “targets the least culpable, turning local law enforcement into a tool for generating ‘collateral arrests.'”
“The agreement being considered … would only help ICE arrest people who are being released from a local detention center,” the statement said. “While supporters frame it as a public safety tool, the people being released from a local detention center are not the people who have been convicted of serious crimes that might constitute a risk to public safety.”
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