Greene County has been abiding by a recently enacted Iowa law in terms of local law enforcement working with the federal government to detain illegal immigrants.

Sheriff Jack Williams says the state of Iowa no longer recognizes “sanctuary cities or counties.” He explains how they handle the new law in regards to when they come into contact with illegal immigrants in the county.

“If we have an illegal immigrant that has criminal charges in his history (like) felonies, we notify the federal government ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and then we’ll detain them until they decide what they are going to do with them. If it’s somebody who’s here illegally and they have no criminal history we don’t hold them. We just notify ICE of their name and address. But if they have a criminal past then we do hold them until ICE tells us what to do with them.”

Williams points out that for the majority of his tenure with the Sheriff’s office, Greene County hasn’t been identified as a “sanctuary county.”

“There was four years that the sheriff at that time decided to make it a sanctuary county. And I removed that, just it’s good to cooperate with the federal government and ICE. The law says now that you can not be a sanctuary city or county, which we already weren’t. So we’ve been cooperating with them for almost all 14 years of my service with Greene County.”

Williams notes that they are not actively seeking out illegal immigrants, but only if they are in a criminal situation or if it comes about during a traffic stop. He adds that there haven’t been any incidents where they’ve had to hold illegal immigrants since he’s been sheriff, but there’s been situations in the past where they’ve had to detain them for ICE.

The new law took effect on July 1st.