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Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has denied any misconduct in his answer to a second disciplinary complaint. (Photo/file)

By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
January 28, 2025

In a hastily called news conference Friday in South Bend, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita announced his office has filed a lawsuit against St. Joseph County Sheriff William Redman and the St. Joseph County Police Department, claiming the local law enforcement is turning the community into a “magnet to attract more illegals.”

The complaint to compel filed in St. Joseph County Circuit Court alleges Redman and the department violated the state’s anti-sanctuary city law by not cooperating with federal immigration authorities. In particular, the lawsuit asserts the defendants have failed to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials prior to releasing certain individuals from custody and have not honored ICE requests to continue detaining suspected undocumented immigrants until federal agents can take custody.

The attorney general’s office is asking the trial court to enjoin the defendants from violating state statute, Indiana Code 5-2-18.2.

In a recording of the news conference posted on the WSBT 22 website, Rokita said the SJCPD’s “deliberate decision” to not cooperate with federal immigration officials was giving “safe harbor to criminal aliens” who should be removed from the country and from St. Joseph County.

“It is making St. Joseph County act as a magnet to attract more illegals to want to come and live here and commit crime here, crime that hurts law-abiding citizens, including our children,” Rokita said. “It’s sad, but the local law enforcement here as become part of the problem, a big part.”

The SJCPD denied the attorney general’s allegations.

“(Rokita) stated that we do not cooperate with ICE, which is false,” the county police department said in a statement. “We regularly communicate with ICE. When the jail receives a detainer or request from ICE, staff promptly informs immigration officials when that individual will be released on their criminal charges for detainment by ICE.”

Attorney general exercising enforcement power

This is the third lawsuit that Rokita’s office has filed against a unit of local government since the Indiana General Assembly amended the state’s anti-sanctuary city law in 2024. The amendment specifically gave the attorney general the power to enforce the law, which prohibits any Indiana governmental body from limiting or restricting the enforcement of federal immigration law.

To date, the attorney general has cited the law in suing the city of East Chicago and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. The lawsuit against East Chicago was dropped after the city rescinded its welcoming ordinance, but the court case is continuing in Monroe County with the attorney general’s suit surviving, so far, an attempt by the defendants to get the complaint tossed.

The attorney general’s office acknowledged ICE detainer requests are not federal mandates; state agencies and local law enforcement are not required to hold any individual if asked to do so by federal immigration agents. However, Blake Lanning, assistant chief deputy in the Indiana Attorney General’s Office, said the state’s anti-sanctuary city law that was amended by the legislature in 2024 requires local law enforcement to comply.

“The General Assembly in our state passed a law saying when the federal law enforcement wants cooperation, you have to give it to them, and you cannot prohibit your agents and officers from cooperating,” Lanning  said during a news conference Friday afternoon. “The legal mandate component of it, if you want to call it that, comes from state law.”

SJCPD, Monroe County sheriff disagree with Rokita

In its statement, the SJCPD indicated it did not agree with the attorney general’s interpretation of the statute.

“We also remind the Attorney General that neither state nor federal law requires the Sheriff or the jail to enforce federal immigration laws,” the SJCPD said in its statement. “Sheriff and the department fully comply with all state and federal laws, and will now unfortunately have to defend itself in court against the State of Indiana.”

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office is making a similar argument in its fight against the attorney general’s lawsuit. In the memorandum in support of the motion to dismiss, Sheriff Ruben Marté asserted that his department is not violating the state’s anti-sanctuary city statute because its policy does not prohibit its employees from maintaining and sharing information with ICE and it does not permit its employees to interfere with the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration laws.

Also, the motion argued the sheriff’s prohibition against keeping people in custody solely on the basis of the ICE detainer is consistent with the state law since that law only deals with the sharing of information and requiring officers to act only to the “full extent permitted by federal law.”

Moreover, the motion contended that if the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office honored the ICE detainers, it could run afoul of the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable seizures. A 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision found that without additional evidence of criminality, the Fourth Amendment does not permit law enforcement to stop and hold individuals solely because they are in the country illegally, the motion said.

The sheriff’s office asserted that the attorney general’s effort to compel it to honor ICE detainer requests not only conflicts with multiple federal court rulings, but could also subject the sheriff and his officers “to potential lawsuit and liability under federal law.”

In a December order, the special judge presiding over the case agreed with the defendants that the attorney general’s office failed to clearly state why the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office is violating Section 3 of the anti-sanctuary city law. However, because it found the attorney general did state a claim as to why the sheriff’s office was violating Section 4 of the statute, the court denied the motion to dismiss and allowed the attorney general to file an amended complaint.

The attorney general filed an amended complaint Jan. 9, arguing that even though the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office included language from the state statute in its departmental policy, it was not interpreting the law correctly.

Rokita: Naturalization ceremony shows ‘right way’

Rokita was in South Bend on Friday to speak at a naturalization ceremony in the Robert A. Grant Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in South Bend. He said he was proud to welcome the individuals and families who had become U.S. citizens that day, because they had immigrated to the United States “the right way.”

“My office will not stop in our work here on this issue until the law’s followed and we put our people first over illegal aliens,” Rokita said. “What is happening in Monroe County and here in St. Joseph County isn’t fair to Hoosier taxpayers or legal immigrants who came here the right way, like the ones I just met with and spoke with.”

In its lawsuit against the SJCPD, Rokita’s office pointed to a report that it said was prepared by ICE and designated the St. Joseph County Police Department as a non-cooperative law enforcement agency. Specifically, the lawsuit asserted, the SJCPD did not honor nine detainer requests issued by ICE between March and September 2024. The lawsuit further claimed that some of those individuals had “committed crimes that pose a direct threat to public safety.”

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Rokita said the individuals whom ICE wanted detained had been charged or convicted of burglary, driving under the influence and assault on a law enforcement officer.

The St. Joseph County trial court docket did not list any attorneys for either Sheriff Redman or the St. Joseph County Police Department as of Tuesday afternoon.

Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.

The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.