12-06-2025
Greene Co. sheriff explains 287(g) partnership with ICE
GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — It wasn't long after Wesley Holt became sheriff in Greene County in 2018 that he thought partnering with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency would be good for his department and the county.
At that time, Greene County was just the second jurisdiction in the state to be a part of the 287(g) program with its Jail Enforcement Model.
'There is a right way to come to our country and there's a wrong way to come to our country,' explained Holt as to why he signed on to the program. 'And it kind of defeats the purpose for the people that have done the right way to come to our country and become natural citizens, and those that are just coming across the border and being here free.'
The way the 287(g) Jail Enforcement Model works is that ICE provides a month-long training class for qualified jailers and computer equipment for them to be able to check the immigration status of those already under arrest in the county.
'Anybody that's arrested into our facility, we go through a booking process and we have one question that says, 'have you, were you born in United States?'' John Key, the Greene County Jail Administrator, told News Channel 11. 'If I answer no to that question, it automatically triggers us to run them through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, to see if they have outstanding warrants or warrants to be deported from the country.'
Key says the system usually provides an answer about immigration status within an hour, but if an arrestee bonds out before an answer is known, the county doesn't hold them pending an answer. If it turns out the person is here illegally, the sheriff's department notifies ICE agents and informs them of the next court date. But suspects aren't automatically deported until their local case is concluded.
'They have to satisfy any local sentence that they may receive, and once that sentence is satisfied, if they have a detainer, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have 72 hours to take them out of our custody,' explained Key.
Those who have been detained or deported after being arrested in Greene County aren't always who you might think.
'They [ICE] picked people back [up] from Russia and Eastern Europe, France. Maybe they just overstayed a work visa, or they've overstayed a tourist visa, or they've overstayed even a student visa,' said Key.
But some of those detained have been accused criminals, said Sheriff Holt. He said that those people don't need to be in Greene County.
'We might get them in here to the jail, they might come in on the DUI, but once we run them through the system, they may be going for statutory rape or anything like that. Criminal charges that they don't need to be on our streets here in Greene County or the State of Tennessee. They need to be deported back to where they came from if they're here illegally,' said Sheriff Holt.
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