Around New England

Cape Sheriff Referred 79 Inmates To Immigration Authorities in 2018

January 10, 2019

Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings’s office referred 79 inmates to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in 2018, the fruits of a program the sheriff entered into with the federal agency.

Sheriff’s office personnel are trained to enter inmates’ date into an ICE database, which helps them determine whether the inmates are in the United States illegally. ICE officials then decide whether they want to pick up the inmates for possible deportation.

Twenty-two of the inmates turned over to ICE in 2018 in Barnstable County, which consists of the 15 towns of Cape Cod, were from Jamaica, according to the Cape Cod Times.

The illegal immigrants arrested and briefly incarcerated at the Barnstable County Jail came from 26 countries in all.

Eleven were from El Salvador. Ten were from Brazil. Five were from the Dominican Republic.

There were three each from Honduras, Ecuador, and Cape Verde.

There were two from Canada, the Philippines, and Russia.

Other countries, from which there were one each, are:

Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Chile, China, Colombia, Haiti, India, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Sicily, Tanzania.

“It’s a success, and has done what we hoped it would do,” Cummings told the Cape Cod Times. “I’m happy with the number of criminals we have been able to keep off the streets. Our goal is to keep the Cape safe.”

In January 2018 the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates, which functions as a sort of legislature for county government, rejected a resolution opposing the sheriff’s cooperation with ICE. The assembly has no authority over the sheriff, who is a state official, but the attempt to protest the program failed.