11/07/2019
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office arranged for 20 employees to be trained for a new program introduced earlier this year by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The new initiative, called the Warrant Service Officer Program, was created by ICE to delegate immigration enforcement authority to local sheriff’s employees to allow those employees to execute ICE arrest warrants in local jails.
The training took place recently at the Lake County Jail, during which 18 correctional officers and 2 deputies assigned to the sheriff’s Warrants unit were certified to execute the warrants.
Once a certified officer executes a warrant in the jail on behalf of ICE, the Sheriff’s Office has 48 hours to transfer custody of the inmate. If ICE doesn’t take the illegal alien into custody within that 48 hours, the individual must be released.
This program serves to broaden ICE’s enforcement authority and allows for a smooth custodial transfer of criminal aliens to ICE custody.
“This new program gives us an additional tool that we can use to help ICE remove criminal illegal aliens from our jail, rather than putting them back in our communities to commit more crimes,” Lake County Sheriff Peyton Grinnell said. “This partnership is win-win; it helps ICE do their job, and helps us do ours,” he added.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office is also a Basic Ordering Agreement partner with ICE.
