Five county jails in Kentucky are now certified to hold Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees indefinitely.
The newest among them is the Hopkins County Jail in Madisonville. The western Kentucky jail joins others in Boone, Campbell, Grayson and Oldham counties.
Law enforcement officers with some Kentucky communities have been working with ICE in the wake of a federal crackdown on immigrants under President Donald Trump.
Hopkins County Jailer Mike Lewis announced the change to the local fiscal court earlier this week, noting the facility was previously certified as a short-term holding facility that could house ICE detainees for up to 72 hours.
Lewis said the decision was a financial one and that contracting with ICE is no different than his jail housing inmates for the state of Kentucky or taking in federal inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service. In all three cases, the jail gets a per diem for housing inmates.
“ICE needed more beds. They needed more availability. So we went through the process and got vetted,” he said. “We can start housing them longer now, and the money that will generate from that will help offset the cost to the county taxpayer [of] running the county jail.”
Lewis said that detainees are arrested on criminal charges and then are detained due to their immigration status.
“We have to have proper paperwork that shows you have a reason to be detained. And every one of these people have charges, criminal charges. It's not about [ICE] going around looking for people because they're in the country illegally. It's about the fact that they have committed crimes while they are here,” Lewis said.
The western Kentucky jailer said that this opportunity comes during a stretch of lower population for the Hopkins County detention facility.
The jail is capable of holding 416 inmates but currently has around 90 empty beds, something Lewis said has impacted the jail’s budget in recent years.
“Pre-COVID and slightly before, we had … sometimes as many as 275 state inmates for the state of Kentucky. Between our local people that we're responsible for and those [state] inmates, we were full all the time,” Lewis said. “The state inmate count is down, which is a good thing for [the] state of Kentucky and the citizens in it … but it also means far less revenue for the jail.”
The certification for the Hopkins County Jail to indefinitely hold ICE detainees came through on April 22. As of Thursday, Lewis said 20 ICE detainees were being held at the facility.
