BOZEMAN — On Tuesday, a Gallatin County Commission meeting was one for the books. A topic, that wasn’t even on the agenda, has caught the attention of so many community members that it led to over an hour of public comment.
Tuesday's commission meeting welcomed nearly 30 community members. All speaking out on the recent proposal from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to use space in the Gallatin County Detention Center.
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“It was mixed in terms of people from both sides of the issue. Pro ICE anti-ICE. I would say the majority was folks who were in opposition,” says Gallatin County Commissioner Zach Brown.
The proposal: ICE has requested 10 beds to temporarily house inmates being transferred into the federal court system. ICE offered to pay $135 per day for each bed. This proposal gained traction around a week ago.
“And in the week before the meeting, our office has received hundreds of emails and phone calls, and all of those messages have been in opposition,” says Brown.
Brown has been a county commissioner for five years and tells me about the main reasons people were opposed to this ICE agreement.
“A lot of folks talked about the economic impact. And then there was definitely a lot of comments about the constitutionality and due process concerns of what is happening at the national level,” he says.
But according to Gallatin County Sheriff Dan Springer, who brought the ICE proposal to the commission?
“My biggest concern is that they’re here committing crimes in our communities. We have to be able to move them out of our communities, down to the back end of the process, into their hearings into the court, and get them removed from this country,” says Springer
Springer tells me there’s been a lot of miscommunication as well. As for the economic concerns?
“We average about 168 beds, is our standard capacity. I think today we’re down to 148. So we have the ability and the room and the time and the manpower to do this, contrary to maybe what the county attorney has said. It’s my operation, I’m well aware we have the capacity to do this,” says Springer.
But according to Commissioner Brown, after Tuesday’s meeting and the bombardment of calls and emails?
“Given all the negative feedback that we’ve gotten, which is definitely the majority of what we’ve heard, I don’t see this going anywhere,” says Brown.
To which the sheriff replies:
“I mean, there's no reason going forward if the commissioners aren't going to do it, and there's no reason going forward if the county attorney's office has decided that it's illegal or it's unconstitutional. Then there's no reason to go forward with it.”
