Democrats’ successes in electing sheriff seats in two counties outside Atlanta are likely to curtail cooperation with federal immigration authorities by local law enforcement.
Gwinnett County Sheriff-elect Keybo Taylor and Cobb County Sheriff-elect Craig Owens both vowed to end agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which allowed deputized local law enforcement at county jails to identify, arrest, and detain people illegal immigrants on behalf of ICE. Taylor said the program led to profiling people and hurt the immigrant community’s ability to trust law enforcement for fear of being deported if police learned that they lacked residency documents.
ICE, a federal agency within the Department of Homeland Security, has worked closely with the Republican sheriffs in Gwinnett and Cobb counties for years. But recent demographic changes in the region upended the Republican Party’s hold on both counties’ sheriff and district attorney seats.
The shifts more broadly reflect a political realignment in Georgia, long a Republican bastion. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Trump in Georgia by about 14,000 votes heading into a statewide recount next week. Biden, the former vice president and 36-year Delaware senator, would be the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992 on his way to the White House.
Democrats have also nabbed a pair of House seats over the past two election cycles covering Gwinnett and Cobb counties, which were long held by Republicans.
And the Georgia sheriff’s races follow national trends in local law enforcement politics. In 2018, a handful of sheriff races in North Carolina went to candidates who promised to cut ties with ICE, echoing a longtime demand by progressive Democrats.
But not everybody is so pleased by the incoming sheriffs’ leftward turn.
“It’s extremely concerning that these new sheriffs are trying to turn Cobb and Gwinnett into sanctuary jurisdictions,” a spokeswoman for Republican Georgia Sen. David Perdue wrote in an email. “This is another example of how the Democrat agenda is not just radical, it’s dangerous for our communities. Republicans will continue to be the party of safety and security.”
“I’m hoping that the sheriffs might change their mind in spite of the pressure,” said Phil Kent, an expert on gang activity in the state and the publisher of crime-tracking site Insider Advantage. “Some of these are serious felons, so you don’t want them being released by the jail, and then, the sheriffs get all the blame.”
In Cobb County, a sheriff’s office employee encountered a Mexican citizen in August who had been charged with simple battery and driving with an expired license, and law enforcement was able to determine his immigration status and alert ICE.
The county commissioner of Fulton County, the most populous in Georgia, wanted to cut ties with ICE but ended up allowing an ICE officer to remain at jails because it allowed people in local custody to be transferred into federal custody without ICE officers going into communities to find people who have been released.
Taylor has not indicated that he will not honor ICE’s requests for it to detain illegal immigrants after they have been ordered released and until ICE can show up. But Owens said he will not work with ICE.
ICE told the Washington Examiner that it plans to work with the new sheriffs despite their dispositions against the program.
“We look forward to working with the newly elected sheriffs to continue our partnership and shared commitment to public safety,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Atlanta Field Office Director Thomas Giles said in a statement.
