| By Big Radio News Staff |
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has apparently turned its attention to Rock County.
ICE appears to be deporting a Beloit man who served 20 days in the Rock County Jail diversion program for second offense operating while intoxicated.
According to report from the Rock County Sheriff’s Office, just before 11 p.m. on Tuesday, deputies were dispatched to 33-year-old Lorenzo Barrios’ home on Keeler Avenue in Beloit.
Barrios was scheduled to be released from custody after serving his time on the local charges, however the Sheriff’s Office took him to the jail on a 48 hour detainer on ICE’s request.
At the time deputies detained Barrios for ICE, he’d been serving a 20-day house arrest with an ankle monitor at home to serve time on the intoxicated arrest.
Sheriff Curtis Fell confirmed Friday that ICE came and got Barrios and took him to an unknown location.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement website, ICE issues detainers against people who have been convicted of violent crimes like burglaries and robberies, kidnapping, homicide, sexual assault, weapons offenses, drug trafficking, and human trafficking.
Those offenses are a far cry from the misdemeanor drunken driving offense Barrios was convicted of here.
In recent weeks, police agencies including Janesville and Beloit’s city police forces have issued public statements that they will not proactively pursue anyone’s immigration status — although if police were warned by ICE or other federal officials of an immigrant believed to pose a serious threat to the public, they’d follow federal law by apprehending and overturning such a person to federal authorities.
The police statements are a response to the President’s abrupt and aggressive moves toward halting illegal immigration, including an executive order that nullifies birthright citizenship.
Fell previously told Big Radio it’s not often that ICE taps his sheriff’s office for help detaining an immigrant. Fell says in those cases, ICE typically does not share with local law enforcement the reason or reasons they’ve requested a person to be detained.
In Barrios’ case, Fell says he learned from an ICE report issued to the sheriff’s office that ICE’s sold impetus to detain Barrios appears to have been his current misdemeanor OWI conviction in Rock County.
Fell says the federal government does not reimburse the jail for keeping a detainee.
Big Radio has reached out to ICE to inquire if Barrios is accused of anything other than being in the country illegally.
