The Phelps County Jail in Rolla has moved out the people it was holding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a local nonprofit that supports detainees and their families.
Abide in Love Rolla says the removal happened on October 15 — about ten days after the Archdiocese of St. Louis sued a different rural Missouri jail over the religious rights of Catholic detainees who could not receive communion from visiting priests.
The group says that despite news reports in August of last year that the Rolla jail would stop taking new ICE detainees, that never actually happened. Sheriff Mike Kirn had said at the time that the $85-per-day federal reimbursement did not cover the county’s costs. Since then, the facility consistently held between 30 and 50 ICE detainees — until the mid-October removal.
The Archdiocese’s federal lawsuit, filed October 5 against the Ste. Genevieve County Detention Center, said priests were only allowed to interact with detainees by phone across a glass partition, making it impossible to distribute communion wafers or hear confessions. Because calls to detainees are monitored by jail staff, the suit argued, the practice interferes with the Roman Catholic sacrament of reconciliation and violates detainees’ First Amendment rights.
Among other relief, the suit sought an injunction holding that the government could not pay federal funds for housing ICE detainees in a facility “unless that facility allows substantially the same religious accommodations requested above.”
A source says the Phelps County Jail had an even stricter policy, with detainees able to speak to people only via iPad. That could have put the jail in the crosshairs of a lawsuit of its own, or of any injunction entered in the Ste. Genevieve County case. The Phelps County sheriff did not respond to messages seeking comment.
According to Abide in Love Rolla’s tracking, eight men went from Rolla to the jail in Greene County. Six went to a facility in Kansas, including a father and daughter who were split up. Ten went to locations the group does not know.
Asked for comment, ICE said it would not “disclose or discuss law enforcement operations” for operational security and the safety of its officers.
The agency’s statement continued: “ICE makes custody determinations daily, on a case-by-case basis in accordance with U.S. law, and various factors to ensure their presence for immigration proceedings or removal from the United States. Despite a historic number of injunctions, DHS is working rapidly and overtime to remove these aliens from detention centers to their final destination — home.” The statement went on to list the options the agency gives to people who self-deport.
