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The use of immigration detainers — requests for jails to hold immigrants for an extra 48 hours so they can potentially be deported — has spiked in Texas since President Trump took office, according to data released last week by the research organization TRAC. Thanks to Texas’ “sanctuary cities” ban, county jails across the state are forced to comply with the growing influx of once-voluntary requests.
But starting last year, Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began withholding key information about the effectiveness of detainers, and the agency is fighting TRAC in court to continue withholding the information. In the past, ICE released statistics on how frequently its agents followed up on detainers and picked up immigrants in jail. Surprisingly, ICE regularly failed to act on its detainers, leaving people, including parents of young children, locked up for extra time and county jails picking up the tab.
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