Trump victory hasn’t changed how Metro handles jailed immigrants

By Ricardo Torres-Cortez

Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016 | 7:45 p.m.

Metro Police's policy of not holding arrested undocumented immigrants past their jail terms remains unchanged after last week's presidential election, spokesman Larry Hadfield said today.

Las Vegas police cooperate with their federal counterparts, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but deportations are a federal issue, not a local one, Hadfield said.

Following 2014 court decisions that questioned the constitutionality of local police holding immigrants based solely on an immigration detainer request from ICE, then-Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie decided the department would observe such requests only if the federal agency can present a judicial determination of probable cause or a warrant from a judicial officer.

That practice is similar to that of major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle.

And it is not expected to change, Hadfield said.

“The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department continues to work with our federal law enforcement partners and will continue to provide professional service to the Las Vegas community regardless of their immigration status in United States,” Gillespie said at the time. "This change has nothing to do with me taking a stand on the immigration issue. It has more to do with a situation we’ve found ourselves in and this is the best thing to do until the feds figure it out."

On the campaign trail, Republican Donald Trump vowed to deport the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States and said he would slash federal funding from "sanctuary cities" that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities, according to the Associated Press.

In an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" after the election, he appeared to soften his stance. He said he would first deport 2 million to 3 million immigrants with a criminal record, build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border and then evaluate what to do with the remaining nine to 10 million remaining immigrants.