Federal inmates headed back to Kane County jail, but not unauthorized immigrants

Kane County would house federal inmates at the county jail, turning a profit at the facility for the first time in nearly six years, under a proposed contract with the U.S. Marshals Service.

However, Sheriff Ron Hain stressed the facility will not lock up unauthorized immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The county board's executive committee, which includes the majority of the county board, gave preliminary approval to the contract Wednesday that will see the U.S. Marshals pay the county $95 per day for every inmate the county houses at the jail. That's a 46% increase from the $65 per day the agency paid to the county before former Sheriff Don Kramer spiked the agreement in late 2014.

At the time, Kramer cited overcrowding, an unsafe lack of guards and forced overtime that resulted in more than 40 formal grievances filed by the union representing the jail staff. But Kramer took repeated criticism from county board Chairman Chris Lauzen for ending the contract without input from the county board. Kramer's decision wiped $2.5 million of income from the county's coffers.

Hain, who took over after defeating Kramer in 2018, said it took more than a year to repair the relationship and get the jail facility up to a standard the U.S. Marshals would accept to pave the way for new contract.

For example, the facility was not in compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. Hain said the requirements of that law had been "ignored" since 2015.

The law includes measures such as bans on cross-gender pat-downs of inmates and specialized training for sexual abuse investigations.

Hain also said one of the main reasons the contract is coming back to Kane County is the return of electronic home monitoring and other measures to keep the local jail population low, providing room for the federal inmates.

The deal puts new pressure on the county to do that - a local jail population uptick of even 15% to 20% could jeopardize the deal, Hain said.

"This contract is very fragile," he said. "If we do have to decrease the marshal's population, that also equals a decrease in revenue and, of course, we have to put our Kane County detainees first in priority."

Hain did not immediately respond to emailed questions about the current guard-to-inmate ratio or the previous practice, under Kramer, of shipping out up to 93 Kane County inmates per day to make room for the federal detainees.

Hain did tell the committee there will be no unauthorized immigrants coming into the jail as a result of the contract with the U.S. Marshals.

"My staff and I are very passionate about the immigration issue," Hain said. "We do not coordinate with ICE at the sheriff's office as far as detention goes. It is mentioned in this contract in one sentence. However, we do have a say-so about who and how many detainees we take every single day. We made it very clear we will not accept immigration detainees."

The full county board will vote on the deal next week. If approved, federal detainees will begin arriving at the jail in the first week of December.