{"id":22096,"date":"2025-05-26T18:32:43","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T00:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/what-is-montezuma-county-sheriffs-basic-stance-on-immigration-status-and-ice\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:11:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:11:45","slug":"what-is-montezuma-county-sheriffs-basic-stance-on-immigration-status-and-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/what-is-montezuma-county-sheriffs-basic-stance-on-immigration-status-and-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s basic stance on immigration status and ICE?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Montezuma
Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office is applying for Jail-Based Behavioral Health Services funding from the Colorado Department of Human Services. The funding could help pay for medication or clinical staff at the Montezuma County Detention Center to better serve individuals with mental health issues.<\/span>Sean Dolan\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Last week, The<\/em> Journal<\/em> spoke with Sheriff Steve Nowlin of the Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office to learn more about the office\u2019s policies regarding immigration status of inmates and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n

When inmates with an immigration enforcement action pending are arrested, ICE will be notified of the arrest and court case number of the arrestee, Nowlin told The<\/em> Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Montezuma County Detention Center and Sheriff\u2019s Office, however, will not hold inmates for ICE, even if the inmate\u2019s sentence expires before ICE can pick them up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not hold for ICE, same as a parole violation, we do not house federal prisoners,\u201d Nowlin said. \u201cOnly La Plata County has a contract for federal inmate housing. ICE knows that when the person wanted for immigration violations is released, it is up to them to make a contact if they want, after the person is released and out of our facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, arrestees aren\u2019t asked about their immigration status at the time of arrest and booking into the detention center.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not ask arrestees about immigration status as we cannot enforce immigration law,\u201d Nowlin said.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff\u2019s Office also does not notify ICE whenever a foreign-born inmate is booked in the jail. ICE would only be notified if there is a wanted notice in the National Crime Information Database, which Nowlin added would be the same as any other federal, out of state or out of jurisdiction warrant or wanted notice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sheriff Steve Nowlin provided insight into these policies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,168,28,52,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-law-enforcement","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77573,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22096\/revisions\/77573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22096"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}