One city councilman in Guyton is calling for the police department to partner with the federal government for immigration enforcement.
The call to action came from City Councilman Theodore Hamby on Wednesday after a decision this week to postpone a vote to decriminalize marijuana in the city limits and instead hold a town hall for citizens to offer feedback. Hamby took to social media to refute claims made by opponents to the ordinance saying his marijuana reclassification ordinance would reduce crime.
He continued on to say that he wants Guyton PD to “enter into an agreement with ICE, known as the 287(g) program, to detain and deport criminal undocumented immigrants.”
The 287(g) program has been in place since 1996. It authorizes ICE to delegate state and local enforcement officers the authority to perform specific immigration officer functions under the agency’s direction and oversight. The program is used to “identify and remove incarcerated criminal aliens who are amenable to removal from the U.S. before they are released into the community.”
Hamby continued:
“If you look at crime reports, you’ll see that many bad hombres are being housed in jails at the taxpayers’ expense. It’s time to clean up our streets once and for all.”
To date, no other elected official in Guyton has expressed a desire to partner with U.S. Immigrations & Customs Enforcement.
The partnership is largely left up to agencies that operate a jail, such as a Sheriff’s Office. As of December 2024, ICE had 287(g) agreements with 135 law enforcement agencies in the nation.
According to the ICE website, only one state agency and four county Sheriff’s Offices in Georgia participate in the 287(g) program.
- Georgia Department of Corrections
- Hall County Sheriff’s Office
- Oconee County Sheriff’s Office
- Polk County Sheriff’s Office
- Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office
There are pending agreements with the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, the Walker County Sheriff’s Office, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, the Murray County Sheriff’s Office, and the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office.
There are no municipal police departments participating for Georgia and only two participating nationwide – one in Alaska and one in Arizona.
Even those law enforcement agencies which do not formally partner with ICE through 287(g) are bound by policies and Georgia law regarding undocumented individuals who are booked into a county jail. Specifically, they are required to contact ICE and a 48-hour hold is placed on the individual before release. This is largely part of why the Georgia Department of Corrections participates in the program.
It’s unclear what kind of illegal immigration problem the City of Guyton is facing with fewer than 2,500 residents. According to the 2020 Census, the last available detailed breakdown of demographics available on the Census website, Guyton had 2,289 residents.
- 1,440 identified as ‘White alone’ (62.9%)
- 615 identified as “Black or African American alone” (26.8%)
- 93 identified as Hispanic or Latino (4%)
- 31 identified as Asisan, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or ‘Some Other Race Alone’ (1.35%)
The remaining 4.95% of the population was a combination of two or more races.
