Once again: What you were complaining about for CBP One was it being used to
assist in scheduling the case to be heard at all. Its point and purpose in this context is to let people
request appointments for their cases to be heard in an orderly fashion.
...Phoenix, this is literally our conversation right now:
You: "Sanctuary cities put criminals back on the streets just to spite ICE by rejecting their detainers."
Me: "No...that's a mischaracterization of the cities following the law by
not holding people past their release date unless there is cause or a judicial warrant, which is constitutionally required.
The law required that since neither of those conditions was met, the people had to be released from custody."
You: "Well if that was the case then those ICE detainers wouldn't be honored!
Me: "Which is precisely why they were not."
Or to put it more directly:
Me: "They didn't release them 'just because they didn't want to cooperate with ICE'. They released them because they legally had to."
You: "Nuh-uh! If they legally had to, they wouldn't hold them!"
Me: "...Correct. Which is why they didn't."
Your argument is self-refuting.
The point you are still missing is that an ICE detainer alone is not sufficient legal basis to continue custody, so therefore when lawful custody ends the person must be released unless there's a warrant or other authority that provides basis beyond ICE's say so. And that what's being
misrepresented as so-called Sanctuary Cities "not honoring ICE detainers and allowing criminals back on the streets for really no reason outside of not wanting to cooperate with ICE" is actually the cities rightly recognizing that the detainer alone was insufficient legal basis to hold the people in question.
Now, ICE detainers are real federal
requests, but courts have repeatedly found that holding someone beyond their lawful release time
solely on the basis of an ICE detainer,
without probable cause or a judicial warrant, violates the Fourth Amendment.
That’s exactly why many "sanctuary" jurisdictions have their policies:
because of those lawsuits and court rulings.
It's not that they "refuse to cooperate" because they "like criminals" or "don't want to cooperate with ICE".
It's that they cannot legally continue detaining someone after the law otherwise dictates they must be released.
Also, saying "criminals are put back on the streets" is rhetorically misleading. In many of these cases, the person:
1) already served their sentence,
2) posted bail,
3) had charges dropped,
or
4) otherwise reached the point where state/local law
required release.
Because that's what our legal system demands. If the law says that the person is free to go, the courts
cannot keep them incarcerated just because ICE sent out an
administrative warrant as a detainer. Overriding that requires a
judicial warrant.
An ICE detainer
is not the same thing.
An ICE detainer is a
civil request that a local jail incarcerate someone until ICE can take custody. Local law enforcement is bound by the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause for continued detention.
So let me spell this out for you in plainly, because this is important:
If a person’s state/local custody authority has ended (sentence completed, bail posted, charges dropped, etc.),
then the government can’t keep holding them solely on a civil ICE detainer without risking unconstitutional detention.
Local authorities generally
can’t hold someone past their scheduled release time solely on a detainer request without a judicial warrant, because doing so can implicate the Fourth Amendment That’s why such detainers are honored when there is independent legal authority to continue custody (such as a judicial warrant or statutory basis), and not honored when that basis for continued incarceration does not exist.
So let's break that down:
- If someone is still serving a sentence or is being held on local charges, ICE involvement doesn’t override that process.
- If someone is eligible for release (charges dropped, bail posted, sentence complete), the jail often must release them under the law.
- ICE may still arrest them afterward, but the local jail may not legally be allowed to extend detention just on request.
You're acting as if not honoring ICE detainers amounts to early release from lawful custody, when that's just not the case. Detainers ask that the jail hold a person beyond their normal release time. It's not releasing someone early, ignoring a court sentence, or freeing someone who otherwise has a legal basis to be held.
What it means is that the jail releases the person
when their local legal custody ends (sentence complete, bail posted, charges dropped, etc.) and
does not extend detention solely on ICE’s request.