EXCLUSIVE: Atlanta ICE field ops. director discusses immigration detention in wake of UGA death

ATLANTA — Layers of law enforcement admit they knew about Jose Ibarra before police arrested him for Laken Riley’s murder. Now, the person currently in charge of deporting him is discussing immigration.

Sean Ervin, Field Operations Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations in Atlanta, spoke exclusively with Channel 2′s Courtney Francisco on Friday about how his division of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement handles detainee custody once migrants have entered the United States.

While ICE officials would not discuss the Ibarra case in detail because of its active status, they did touch on the detainer status of the case.

Ervin’s team has issued a detainer in Ibarra’s case, asking Athens-Clarke County Jail deputies to hold him for 48 hours if he is ever granted release from jail.

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“At its very base, an immigration detainer is simply a request to a federal, state or local law enforcement agency saying ICE has an interest in this person, we have probable cause to believe they’re illegally in the country and all we’re asking is you hold them until we take custody of them,” Ervin said.

He said the detainer asks the local law enforcement agency to allow ICE agents 48 hours to get there.

Ervin told Channel 2 Action News he has 100 officers working in Georgia and they need the extra time to get to the jails.

However, he said agents do not issue detainers in every case.

“No, definitely not,” said Ervin. “We vet, I would say, hundreds of cases a week, and out of those it’s really a small fraction that meet the threshold for our immigration enforcement priorities, and those are the cases that we‘ll put detainers on.”

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Ervin has worked for ICE since the Clinton Administration, and each administration issues new rules.

“With each administration, there’s going to be a swing toward less enforcement and more enforcement,” Ervin said.

To read current policies, click here.

Ervin said many cities in Georgia stopped honoring ICE detainers during the Trump Administration due to strict immigration policies.

However, he argued, keeping the suspect in jail allows his agents to detain them in a more secure environment.

“Generally speaking, it’s a safe and calm transfer,” Ervin said. “When those detainers aren’t honored, I have to send my officers out into the public, and there’s so many variables we can’t control.”

He said current policies would have allowed agents to detain Ibarra once he was arrested in New York accused of child endangerment.

However, the jail released Ibarra before agents could arrive.

He told Channel 2 Action News that Ibarra’s run-in with the law in Athens for shoplifting would not have triggered ICE to request a detainer because officers did not arrest him. They charged him in the case, asking him to return to court for fingerprinting.

Before warrants were served in that case, Riley was murdered.

Now, Georgia lawmakers could pass a bill as early as next week that requires Sheriffs to work with ICE or face misdemeanor charges.

Francisco spoke to an immigration attorney about Ibarra’s path from Venezuela to Athens last Sunday.

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