On Monday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Live,” Mecklenburg County, NC Sheriff Garry McFadden (D) discussed immigration operations in the Charlotte area and said that a detainer is “not a legal document.”
Host Marni Hughes asked, “What about the statement that local officials were not cooperating in carrying out these detainers? Did your department have any influence in that or any say?”
McFadden responded, “Well, [these are] the words that they used and what we call the word salad. A detainer is not a legal document, and the word legal needs to be also understood that it is an official document of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. But it’s not a legal document. So, what we simply [were] asking them is this, we will honor anything that a judicial official would sign, and we will honor that. But our relationship now with ICE, Homeland Security is different because of House Bill 318. House Bill 318 mandates us to cooperate with ICE, but we have always cooperate[d] with ICE because of North Carolina General Statute 162.62 that actually mandates every sheriff in North Carolina to cooperate with ICE, even before this. But we simply are seeing that they are targeting the Democratic black sheriffs. … We are cooperating with them. The detainer is not a legal document, but it is an official document, only signed by an ICE agent. We are simply saying this: If you want us to hold someone, then bring us a legal document. But all of that has changed from a couple of months ago, because what we have, House Bill 318, that now allows us to hold someone in custody for an additional 48 hours, even after a judge or a magistrate releases them. So, it’s simply a wordplay game back and forth.”
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