Giles County Sheriff’s Office Partners With US Customs & Immigration Enforcement

The Giles County Sheriff’s Department is the latest Tennessee law enforcement agency to apply to partner with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an effort to ramp up deportations.

Giles County will join four other Tennessee counties – Knox, Greene, Hamilton, and Putnam – under the federal 287g program, which allows local authorities to take on some ICE agent duties.

The Knox, Greene, Hamilton and Putnam sheriff’s departments are all part of the program’s jail enforcement model, where local officials work to identify undocumented residents in custody and begin the immigration proceedings on behalf of ICE. Giles, however, would take the enforcement a step further.

The agency has applied to participate in the program’s warrant service officer model, which allows local officials to serve civil immigration warrants on undocumented residents in their agency’s jail.

The application for Giles County was listed as pending on the federal website as of April 16th. If approved, Giles would be the first county in the state to participate in the warrant program.

Giles County Sheriff Joe Purvis said he applied for the program to help reduce the time people might sit in his jail. Under the program, one of his staff can serve a warrant and begin the transportation process without having to wait for an ICE agent to come to the jail to serve a warrant.