Lancaster County is on a list of approximately 300 cities, counties and states the Center for Immigration Studies calls sanctuary jurisdictions.
But local officials say that "sanctuary" designation is not accurate, because the county cooperates with federal immigration authorities in every way but one.
Immigration authorities get fingerprints from every person booked into the Lancaster County jail who was not born in the United States.
If the immigration authorities request notification, the jail staff notify them when someone is ready to be released from jail. That notification has occurred 77 times since Sept. 4, 2015.
What the county does not do is detain prisoners for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without a court order or a warrant.Ìý
For that reason, the county is on the sanctuary list compiled by the conservative nonprofit immigration group that has been designated an by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights nonprofit.
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In 2014, county attorneys across the country became concerned about the liability of detaining people in jail after they had completed a jail sentence based on a one-page detainer request from ICE, signed by an ICE employee and not by a judge.
The ACLU and other groups started filing lawsuits around the country against jails and counties that ran these jails, said Lancaster County Attorney Joe Kelly. Several courts across the country had ruled in favor of the immigrants held by these detainers.
The detainer documents did not specify the length of time a person should be held. Sometimes immigration officials picked up the person, sometimes they did not, Kelly said.
Four Nebraska counties — Lancaster, Douglas, Sarpy and Hall — all made the center's sanctuary list because of this policy of refusing to detain people without a warrant.
Based on his own research, Kelly advised Lancaster County officials they should not detain anyone based on these employee-signed detention orders.
These detainers, with no definite timeline for holding someone, put counties in a poor position legally, Kelly said.
Communities who simply don't honor the detainer requests are not sanctuary cities, Kelly said. Real sanctuary localities direct their employees not to notify or communicate with ICE, he said.Ìý
In Lincoln, the city police and county officials do work with immigration authorities, according to Brad Johnson, county jail director.
Currently, ICE is notified any time a suspected foreign-born individual is placed into custody. County staff also answer calls from ICE asking if a specific person is in custody, said Johnson.
If ICE sends paperwork expressing an interest in an individual, then the county jail staff will let it know a week or two before someone gets out after serving a specific sentence.
ICE is also given notice when someone is posting bond, though that notice is much shorter, said Johnson.
"There is no problem whatsoever with notification," Kelly said. "And there is a lot of back-and-forth conversation with ICE, telling them someone is going to be released."
Lincoln or Lancaster County have never been listed as a sanctuary community by the government, Kelly points out.
And Lincoln is not a sanctuary city under the language of a Jan. 25 executive order "," signed by President Donald Trump, according to Kelly.
That document says jurisdictions that outwardly refuse to comply with notification are sanctuary cities. “No. That would not apply to us," Kelly said.
The county attorney will be reviewing whether the jail should detain people for up to 48 hours under a new ICE form that's been in use for several months, Johnson said.
“We work closely with immigration and we provide them the information they are asking for," Johnson said. "We will see what Joe Kelly feels about detaining, once he has had time to research and provide an opinion†about the new form, Johnson said.
The Center for Immigration Studies says the "data collected by the center during the past quarter-century has led many of our researchers to conclude that current, high levels of immigration are making it harder to achieve such important national objectives as better public schools, a cleaner environment, homeland security, and a living wage for every native-born and immigrant worker."
It also says many of its members believe in a "low-immigration, pro-immigrant" vision of an America that admits fewer immigrants but affords a warmer welcome for those who are admitted.