Mecklenburg sheriff says he notified ICE about undocumented man. ICE never showed up.
The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office notified federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement of a man in the jail earlier this month, but ICE did not pick him up within the 48 hours the law allows him to be held, Sheriff Garry McFadden said.
McFadden issued two statements on the case following a Feb. 7 WSOC-TV news report on the man, identified as a Honduran national. In that report, a Homeland Security supervisor faulted the Mecklenburg Sheriff’s Office for not “honoring” ICE detainers.
But McFadden and his staff did what state law requires, the sheriff said.
“I have my responsibilities as Sheriff of Mecklenburg County, and ICE has theirs,” McFadden said in a Feb. 13 statement. “However, ICE cannot expect me to operate outside the scope of the law as my predecessors have done. I am not an ICE officer. I am the Sheriff, and my priority is serving and protecting my community while always upholding the law.”
McFadden says he’s following a recent state law, passed in House Bill 10, that requires him to work with the federal immigration agency, and that his requests to meet with local ICE officials have been futile.
What happened?
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police arrested Jose Napoleon-Serrano, 40, on Jan. 12 and charged him with domestic violence.
The sheriff’s office determined he was not a U.S. citizen and notified ICE within an hour of his arrest.
The next day, the sheriff’s office received — and a magistrate signed — paperwork from ICE for the man to be held for 48 hours as required by law.
The 48-hour window expired on Jan. 15, but ICE did not take custody of the man. He posted a $5,000 bond and was released from custody.
McFadden’s spokesperson, Sarah Mastouri, said in a statement to media that ICE never communicated with the sheriff’s office after sending the detainer request on Jan. 13.
Sheriff’s Office process
The sheriff’s office has a protocol. Jail staff ask someone three questions about their citizenship. People are entered into a federal database, “through a pin message to ICE,” according to the sheriff’s office.
“Essentially, MCSO uses this system to query ICE when we cannot determine citizenship,” Mastouri told news media this month. “It includes dates, time stamps and other pertinent details.”
It’s the same process previous sheriffs used, McFadden’s office said, and it has limits.
It “does not provide MCSO with details about a person’s past arrests, encounters, or level of danger,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. “Only ICE has that information. That said, when ICE saw (Napoleon-Serrano’s) name, they should have immediately recognized that they had encountered him twice before and previously deported him twice.”
ICE wants a phone call
Even with McFadden’s office sending over notice that someone is in jail, what ICE needs is a different heads-up, regional spokesperson Lindsay Williams said. That could be a phone call or an email 48 hours before someone is released from the jail, he said.
“Give us 48 hours notice of the release like, ‘Hey, today’s Monday. We’re going to release him on Wednesday at 2 o’clock,’” Williams said.
Some sheriffs in North Carolina do make a phone call to ICE, he said.
The state law requiring sheriffs to cooperate with ICE does not mention a phone call. The legislature might “beef up” that law, state House Speaker Destin Hall told WSOC.
“The sheriff and any law enforcement officer’s first duty is to keep the public safe and this is one of the ways that they can keep the public safe is by cooperating with their federal law enforcement partners,” Hall said.
Other sheriffs’ concerns
Other sheriffs have questioned ICE’s process and House Bill 10.
“They are forcing us to do things that we were not elected to do nor did we want to be in this position,” Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller said of the bill last April, before it became law. “This creates a fear that prevents the community from reporting serious crimes.”
Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood told a radio station last month that House Bill 10 affects his jail’s operations. Over three years, he received about 17 detainers, he said. ICE picked up zero, he said.
“While ICE is probably one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the United States, and has the biggest pocket of money, we are being requested to house their detainees at no cost,” he said. “That affects our operations. It affects the taxpayers of this county. And they should be upset that we’re being asked to do that.”
One solution would be for Homeland Security to get a federal order from a federal magistrate, bring it to Blackwood and he would hold that person until they were picked up. His office would bill the federal government for that jail time, he said.
“That’s the solution,” Blackwood said. “And it’s really very simple.”
This story was originally published February 21, 2025 at 5:00 AM.