Mifflin County Commissioner Kevin Kdish recently released the following statement:

“It has recently come to the Commissioners’ attention that the Mifflin County Correctional Facility, along with several other rural county correctional facilities, has been erroneously designated by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) as a facility that only partially cooperates with their agency. 

The ICE website indicates that the MCCF notifies them of detentions, but does not always hold individuals for ICE until they are picked up. This is certainly NOT the case and we are in the process of correcting this erroneous designation.

The MCCF has always fully cooperated with ICE and other federal agencies, which from time to time have prisoners in our facility. The Warden has assured the Commissioners that whenever there is an ICE detainee, it is promptly reported to ICE and that individual is promptly picked up by ICE. 

Mifflin County continues to evaluate evolving case law to ensure that it is doing everything legally possible to work with partners in the immigration enforcement agencies. In 2014, a federal appellate court in the case of Galarza vs. Szalczyk, et al., ruled that only judges’ orders authorize county jails to hold individuals of interest to ICE beyond their release date.

The Mifflin County Correctional Facility regularly works with officials to communicate and coordinate custody exchanges for individuals of interest to ICE who are being released from jail.

There is also some suggestion that this designation indicates that Mifflin County is a “Sanctuary County.”  Nothing could be further from the truth. The term Sanctuary County envisions a jurisdiction which allows or encourages the transportation of illegal immigrants to the jurisdiction knowingly, and in exchange for some benefit. Such is not now the case, nor has it ever been.

The Center for Immigration Studies is the organization that created the Sanctuary List. We have been assured that our county will be removed from the list once ICE confirms we are in full compliance.

Mifflin County commissioners are in the process of correcting the erroneous ICE designation of partially cooperating. As to the concept of illegal aliens coming to Mifflin County by some means of transportation in exchange for some governmental benefit, the Commissioners confirm that they have no such arrangement, and have not received any credible, firsthand report of such an event.

Please be assured that this county does not encourage illegal immigration and always has and will continue to fully cooperate with ICE and other federal agencies. We suspect along with ICE that this mistaken designation was due to a data quality issue.

In light of Mifflin County’s long history of cooperation with federal immigration authorities, such inclusion is simply inaccurate and does not reflect the policies or practices of the county and its correctional facility.

END

Kevin

Kevin P. Kodish

Mifflin County Commissioner

20 North Wayne Street

Lewistown, PA  17044″