HUNTSVILLE — At Thursday's Huntsville City Council meeting, the liberal activist group Indivisible-District 5 North Alabama introduced a resolution urging Huntsville's Police Department not to participate in any local immigration operations led by federal agencies.
The group labeled any possible actions by HPD on the matter as discriminatory while also claiming that illegal aliens across North Alabama are being 'disappeared."
The motion specifically asked the council not to enter the 287(g) program, which allows local law enforcement agencies to enforce certain aspects of U.S. immigration law, expanding departments' authority to:
- Identify and process removable aliens with pending or active criminal charges.
- Enforce limited immigration authorities with ICE oversight during routine duties.
- Serve and execute administrative warrants on removable aliens in jail.
Speakers voiced their concerns during the meeting regarding ICE potentially partnering with HPD.
"What we are witnessing is not deportation, it is kidnapping, and if Huntsville cooperates with ICE in these practices, then we too are complicit," an activist lamented.
John Hamilton, city administrator, explained that the council has no ability to block actions from federal agencies. He also noted that HPD would be required to gain consent from the council to enter into any agreement with ICE.
"HPD doesn't have the authority to enter into an agreement like that on their own," said Hamilton. "That's something that would have to come before the city council for your approval if they were to enter into some sort of agreement like that."
According to Hamilton, HPD lacks the resources to assist with immigration-related operations.
"We're in the budget season, so I spent a lot of time looking at the resourcing of HPD. HPD isn't resourced to take on an expansion of missions like that. So the conversation will be more than just a Memorandum of Agreement. It'll also be about how we actually get HPD the capability to do something like that," he said. "And so that'd be a much bigger, broader conversation than just taking on those kinds of things. But absolutely, immigration enforcement does occur in our city, and those things are ongoing."
"Citizens understand that you, as a city council, don't have authority over a federal agency. But we do recognize they operate in our city," Hamilton continued.
"There's certainly not anything that you or HPD or the mayor or myself or anybody else can do to stop ICE or any other federal agency from doing operations that they've been directed to do by their leadership," he added.
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