Earlier this week, Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese did something I've never seen from a local sheriff: He sought input on one of his office's policies.
From March 1-30, the MCSO is accepting citizen commentary on its newly formalized policies for dealing with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. You can go to the office's website, read over the policy and submit your thoughts. At the end of the month, Reese is promising to go over any and all commentary, and decide whether to make any changes.
This is obviously an important piece of policy right now, as Donald Trump's ICE looks to be less forgiving of minuscule criminal accusations leveled at undocumented immigrants than Barack Obama's (which wasn't exactly lenient) and is even initiating deportations on people with no criminal history, as OPB reports is happening locally.
And the MCSO's stance on ICE is potentially more important than, say, the Portland Police Bureau's, because the sheriff controls the jail. ICE routinely asks local jails to hold undocumented immigrants who've been booked for crimes until its agents can come and pick them up. But ever since a 2014 federal court ruling finding the practice is illegal, that's not been happening.
Reese, who has preached a sensible-sounding policy in which his employees enforce local laws and don't assist ICE in policing immigration, hasn't had universal buy-in from employees. In late January, reports emerged that a deputy named Larry Wenzel helped ICE agents detain a man who was in the country illegally. (The MCSO began an internal investigation into the incident.)
At around the time those reports were surfacing, Reese put out a statement [PDF] laying out an expectation that his employees wouldn't help crack down on immigration law. Here's the meat of that memo.
That same sentiment exists in the official policy Reese released earlier this week, thought the language has changed a bit. The policy also goes into more detail about when and how MCSO employees will inquire of a person's country of origin, and how that information will be reported. Here's a PDF.
The practice of soliciting public comment is something Reese brings directly from his time at the Portland Police Bureau, which routinely puts forward its directives for public comment. MCSO Sgt. Bryan White tells the Mercury the process is "in the interest of making sure that we haven’t missed anything that would impact the public....This is something that's come to the forefront as a result of recent changes in our political climate."