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Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued hundreds of thousands of "detainers," which request local jurisdictions to hold prisoners longer than any state criminal charges would otherwise justify. But these detainers are nothing but requests. They're not warrants signed by judges based on probable cause, as required by the Fourth Amendment. Courts have repeatedly held that local jurisdictions are free to disregard detainers, and that compliance with them violates the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable arrests.
To make matters worse, detainers are often based on misinformation. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, ICE has illegally issued detainers for hundreds of U.S. citizens, although it has no jurisdiction to do so. And during a recent 50-month period, more than 77 percent of detainers were issued to individuals with no criminal record.
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