previous news release<\/a>, the DOC writes, “Minnesota law requires DOC to notify ICE when an individual committed to DOC custody is not a United States citizen. DOC fully complies with this requirement and goes further by honoring all detainers as a matter of policy, even though state law does not require detainer compliance. ICE alone determines whether to place a detainer and is responsible for arranging pickup.”\u00a0<\/p>\nCommissioner Schnell said the DOC conducted its own survey of county jails across the state, showing 94 people with ICE detainers. In state prisons, there are 207 people with ICE detainers.<\/p>\n
“That total is 301 individuals, nowhere close to the 1,360 that DHS has discussed,” said Commissioner Schnell.<\/p>\n
That discrepancy of about 1,000 people, Schnell said, does not match Minnesota records.<\/p>\n
\u201cDHS is asking the public to trust a number it refuses to explain,” he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve reviewed every single DHS person who DHS has publicly named and here\u2019s what we found, many individuals were never in Minnesota DOC custody at all, several have no Minnesota court or prison records whatsoever, some had short stays in Minnesota county jails, some are in custody in other states, many were directly released to ICE including cases going back to 2009, 2001, even into the 1990s.”<\/p>\n
According to state law, law enforcement cannot keep someone on an immigration detainer if the person would otherwise be released from custody.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schnell said if DHS believes they have failed to honor an ICE detainer, they’re asking them to reach out about the specific case, so it can be addressed. He said the DOC has not found any data to indicate this is true on their end.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Schnell repeatedly said that DHS is not providing a statistical background to its agents’ arrests. He provided a video at the press conference that showed two individuals on Jan. 12 in a Lino Lakes enclosure leaving DOC custody and allegedly going into direct custody of ICE agents. Then, Commissioner Schnell showed a screenshot of a DHS press release that said the two “criminal illegal aliens” were arrested by ICE agents during Operation Metro Surge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schnell said DOC notified ICE when Meng Khong Yang and Joshua Fornoh came into their prison facility and notified them weeks in advance when their prison terms reached their end.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth of these individuals Mr. Yang and Mr. Fornoh ended up on DHS\u2019s January 13 press release with them insinuating they were released individuals, released into the community specifically saying and I quote \u2018criminal illegal aliens arrested yesterday during Operation Metro Surge.’ These people were transferred; their custody was transferred from the DOC directly to them, they were not picked up in the community, as is implied. I will admit it feels a little absurd even showing a video like this to all of you,” said Commissioner Schnell.<\/p>\n
He said he’s reached out DHS several times directly and through third-parties to talk and DHS hasn’t returned their calls. However, he said the “false information” doesn’t reflect day-to-day operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe information that is being put out certainly does not reflect the reality that people who have been issued a court ordered sentence in our state serve our their time in custody, and when they\u2019re released from custody there are turned over to ICE if they have a detainer, and if ICE elects to take custody of them and then they do what they do, deport or release them back into the community. If they\u2019re released back into the community, we provide supervision of them up to expiration of the court-imposed sentence.”<\/p>\n
Schnell said he doesn’t believe what federal officials are talking about is a reflection of local operations, but he doesn’t know they’re putting out misleading information and won’t talk to his department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minnesota Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell has pushed back on claims being made about the number of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-424595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}