'She's Native American!' Screwup leads to ICE effort to deport ancient tribe member

A day before Arizona native Leticia Jacobo was scheduled to be released from an Iowa jail, her mom visited to verify pickup details with the staff. Ericka Burns was excited to drive her daughter home after spending a month apart and wanted to make sure Jacobo wasn’t forced to wait a minute longer than necessary.

But jail staff told Burns that Jacobo wouldn’t be let go because she would be turned over to immigration agents — even though Jacobo is Native American.

The 24-year-old was born in Phoenix and is a member of Arizona’s Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. She was booked into the Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, where she currently lives, in September for allegedly driving with a suspended license. Jacobo was scheduled to be released on Nov. 11, but what should have been a routine process was complicated and delayed by an erroneously issued ICE detainer. She was ultimately allowed to leave just before 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 12.

Maria Nunez, Burns’ sister, said that it was terrifying to be told that Jacobo would be taken by federal agents, especially because no one appeared willing to correct the mistake at first.

“My sister said, ‘How is she going to get deported if she’s a Native American?’ and ‘We have proof,’” Nunez recounted. “They said, ‘Well, we don’t know because we’re not immigration and we can’t answer those questions. We’re just holding her for them. So, when they pick her up tonight they’re going to go ahead and deport her to wherever they’re going to take her, but we have no information on that.’”

Jacobo’s family quickly mobilized, with just hours left on the clock before jail staff said she would be transferred into federal custody. The Veteran’s Day holiday resulted in several communication dead ends. Desperate for some kind of help, Jacobo’s aunts, both in Arizona and Nebraska, put out calls for help via Facebook and connected with local tribal leaders. Ericka took a copy of Jacobo’s birth certificate to the jail and stayed on site to make sure ICE didn’t take her daughter.

Lt. Mark Chance, a spokesman for the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the jail, said that the ICE detainer against Jacobo was the result of a clerical mix-up and was intended for a different person who was booked in the jail at the same time. ICE agents requested a detainer be placed on that person, but a mistake resulted in it being put on Jacobo’s file, instead. Chance said that “internal” discussions would likely be had about how to prevent similar problems in the future.

“It was human error, but I’m sure as soon as the command staff find out about it, they’re going to have some meetings with their supervisors internally and be like, ‘Hey, guys, we gotta keep our thumb on this, this is silly,’” Chance said.

What’s an ICE detainer?

Polk County Jail has a 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That partnership authorizes local law enforcement officials to perform some immigration enforcement functions, including preparing removal paperwork, interrogating people who have been arrested about their citizenship status and comparing their biographic information against U.S. Department of Homeland Security databases to identify people who may be eligible for deportation. The purpose of the program is to cut down on the investigative legwork for ICE and increase deportations.

Police officers trained under the 287(g) program can issue ICE detainers based on the information they’ve gathered or at the written request of federal officials. Detainers allow a person in custody to be held for an extra 48 hours after their scheduled release time, even if they have not yet been convicted of a crime, to give ICE agents time to take them into custody.

Because detainer requests don’t require probable cause and aren’t mandatory in the same way that judicial orders are, some law enforcement agencies choose to ignore them, wary of the legal consequences. The courts have ruled that detainers are potentially unconstitutional because they result in prolonged imprisonment, and multiple lawsuits have been filed after detainers were issued against U.S. citizens.

The use of detainers has come under new scrutiny amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, which has seen a massive spike in their issuance. Within the first two months of Trump taking office, the rate of detainers issued on a daily basis jumped by 72% compared with the first two months of Biden’s presidency.

Mistake or discrimination?

Jacobo’s ordeal highlights the fallout of aggressive immigration enforcement for Native Americans. In January, Navajo Nation officials reported more than a dozen Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico had been questioned or detained by federal immigration authorities.

Nunez told the Arizona Mirror she was skeptical that the mix-up was nothing more than a misunderstanding, and that discrimination wasn’t involved at least to some degree. She noted that Jacobo had her tribal identification with her, had been fingerprinted, had her Social Security number on file and has been booked into the same jail more than once.

“I do want to say that it’s racial profiling because she’s been there before, they have a rap sheet on her — why would they make a mistake with someone that’s constantly coming in?” Nunez asked.

She added that her sister is considering further legal action and said that she’s concerned about the potential for future harm. Not everyone has a family as involved in their welfare as Jacobo does, she pointed out. Jacobo herself wasn’t informed about the detainer against her, despite it being placed on her file a week earlier, on Nov. 4.

The ICE field office for the midwest region did not answer questions about whether they verify existing detainers for accuracy or what their processes are for ensuring Native Americans aren’t being detained.

“I’m just so happy that we caught it and we know what’s going on and she’s not alone in this,” Nunez said, before Jacobo was released. “I just hope it doesn’t ever happen to someone else, with them not knowing they’re going to get deported.”