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Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton, and at least eight other sheriffs across the state, will no longer honor requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain jail inmates past their required jail time.

(Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian)

At least nine Oregon counties have put a stop to holding undocumented immigrants in jail for the sole purpose of deportation, a shift that legal experts say will inevitably spread across the state and, possibly, the nation.

Sheriff’s agencies in Deschutes and Marion counties confirmed Thursday that they have joined their metro-area counterparts in suspending the policy, which keeps suspected undocumented immigrants in jail for deportation after their booking charges have cleared. The Norcor regional facility, which serves the counties of Hood River, Wasco, Gilliam, Sherman and sometimes Wheeler, is also affected by the new policy.

Sheriff’s officials in Washington, Multnomah and Clackamas counties announced the policy change Wednesday, after a federal judge ruled that Clackamas County violated one woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by holding her for immigration authorities without probable cause.

Those counties' jails will no longer hold such individuals for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without a court order or warrant, said Lt. Steve Alexander, a Multnomah County sheriff’s spokesman. He said ICE will continue to have access to a roster of foreign-born detainees, but that the local agencies will no longer prevent certain immigrants from posting bail.

The judge's decision has immigrant rights advocates cheering and other sheriff’s offices across Oregon racing to revise their detainer policies.

Liliana Luna, an immigrant rights organizer with Oregon DreamActivist, said every bit of action and advocacy was required to get to this point. Last month, the organization supported close to 120 immigrants in crossing the border from Mexico as part of an anti-deportations protest.

“Once they know this policy is in place, that it’s no longer legal to hold people for immigration, this is going to open the door for the community to trust the authorities,” she said.

It is unclear how the rest of Oregon’s 36 counties will respond to the ruling, though Gilliam County Sheriff Gary Bettencourt said it’s probable they will follow the metro area’s precedent.

“This ruling leaves us no other options at this point,” said Bettencourt, who’s also president of the Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association. “It kind of leaves us in a situation where we don’t have much of a choice.”

Bettencourt said Oregon sheriff’s offices have worked cooperatively with their federal partners, but certainly don’t want to violate anyone’s constitutional rights.

Maria Miranda-Olivares sued Clackamas County after being held 19 hours after completing a two-day jail sentence while U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials investigated her residency status. She had been arrested March 14, 2012, on a domestic violence charge.

Under the Secure Communities program, used to identify deportable immigrants in U.S. jails, ICE asks local authorities to hold certain inmates for up to two business days until they can be taken into federal custody. Most Oregon counties previously honored those requests.

But U.S. District Court Judge Janice M. Stewart ruled Friday that county officials misinterpreted such requests as mandatory. She sided with a federal appeals court decision last month, which said localities are not required to abide by ICE requests and could be held accountable for wrongful immigration detentions.

“This court concludes that ... the Jail was at liberty to refuse ICE’s request to detain Miranda-Olivares if that detention violated her constitutional rights. Accordingly, the County cannot avail itself of the defense that its practice and custom did not cause the allegedly unlawful detention,” she wrote.

ICE itself has said the detainer requests are discretionary, though many localities have treated them as orders because of a reference to federal law, which says local police “shall” hold immigrants for deportation under such instances.

"The fact that the detainers contain both language of request and command has lead to conflicting interpretations as to whether the immigration detainers provide legal authority for the continued custody of the people named in the detainers," Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts wrote in an announcement of the new policy.

Portland Immigration Attorney Stephen Manning said even though Stewart’s decision is not binding for sheriff’s offices outside Clackamas County, it sends a clear signal. And with the tri-county agencies now on board, Manning said, “that in effect makes Oregon a bellwether state.”

“This changes the game,” he said.

Lewis and Clark College Professor Juliet Stumpf, who specializes at the intersection of criminal and immigration law, agreed. She said the bottom line is that it would be very risky for a county to continue detaining immigrants at ICE's request.

“Oregon may actually be one of the leading areas of the country in basically rejecting the idea that state and local law enforcement officers should pay attention to the detainers,” she said.

Stumpf predicts the regional changes will snowball and spread across the country. Other cities, including Miami, New Orleans and, most recently, Philadelphia, have updated their policies on ICE holds.

In December 2012, the Obama administration announced that immigrants arrested for minor crimes would no longer be targeted for deportation. The move was partly a response to pushback from immigrant advocates and some city officials against the Secure Communities program, which they contend tears families apart and breaches the trust between community residents and local law enforcement.

Sheriff Dan Staton changed Multnomah County's detention policy last April in favor of releasing undocumented immigrants jailed for low-level crimes. Wednesday's announcement extends that policy even further.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Multnomah County last June, arguing that ICE holds violate state law and constitutional rights. Legislative Director Becky Straus said the entanglement between local police and immigration enforcement harms communities by making residents less likely to reach out about public safety issues or social services.



"We’ve been concerned about that relationship for quite some time and we are encouraged to see that courts are now concerned as well," she said.

On March 29, Miranda-Olivares pleaded guilty to one charge of contempt of court, and was sentenced to 48 hours in jail and probation. She received credit for time served and should have been freed the same day.

However, jail officials detained her until the next day, giving ICE officials time to pick her up.

In her ruling, Stewart wrote that the county’s practice of keeping immigrants in jail for ICE was tantamount to Miranda-Olivares being taken into custody a second time, even though her charges had been settled. A later hearing will determine how much the county owes Miranda-Olivares in damages.

“The way I read this opinion is that the jails need to take civil rights of their detainees seriously,” said David Henretty, Miranda-Olivares’ attorney. “If they fail to do so, they could be held accountable. I think that’s an important message out there to anybody, whether you’re a noncitizen, an immigrant or whoever.”

--Andrea Castillo

Molly Harbarger of The Oregonian staff contributed to this report