Livingston County enters ICE cooperation agreement; sheriff says it ‘doesn’t change anything’

Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy, who is also a Republican candidate for state Senate, told Michigan Advance in an interview that this agreement will not change the actual actions that his officers are taking on the ground, as they were already cooperating with ICE and other Department of Homeland Security agencies. 

“We have always cooperated with other agencies, whether state, federal, local, doesn’t make any difference,” he said, specifically referring to detainer requests from other agencies for individuals held in the Livingston County jail. “We have always done that for ICE.”

“If another bona fide law enforcement agency says, ‘Hey, please hold this person, because we’ll come get them,’ then by all means, we’re going to hold them. That’s what we do,” he added.

As for why his office would sign the agreement now, Murphy noted that he was initially resistant to signing any memorandum of understanding, because it was already their policy. However, the office wanted to apply for a new Department of Justice grant opportunity that can be used for equipment for immigration investigations. However, a stipulation of that grant is that only agencies with 287(g) agreements or plans to enter such an agreement were eligible to apply. 

“All that does is basically allows us to detain illegals and legitimately serve them with notice that they’re being detained for immigration,” he said of the 287(g) agreement, noting that he intentionally did not sign an agreement in the Task Force Model, which allows for more direct immigration enforcement by local officers. “There’s a reason that there’s local law enforcement, and there’s a reason that there’s federal law enforcement. We both enforce different laws.”

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Immigrant rights advocates were swift to criticize the decision to enter the agreement — Livingston County is the state’s 10th-most populous, and includes major highway connections to cities including Detroit and Ann Arbor, where ICE has had a notable presence. 

A Facebook post from the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center urged residents and those concerned about the agreement to contact Livingston County officials and tell them to rescind the agreement. 

The group said in a fact sheet about the agreements that the 287(g) program, “has been shown to result in racial profiling, be costly for localities, target individuals with little or no criminal history, and harm the relationship between police and local communities.”

Livingston County is the eighth jurisdiction in Michigan with an active 287(g) agreement, joining five other counties and two municipalities. It is the second agreement signed this year in Michigan — but the first, signed by the Saginaw County village of Oakley, was rescinded just months later by the Oakley Village City Council.