“I simply cannot take on ICE prisoners without more space.”
– Alamance County sheriff Terry Johnson
The office of Alamance County’s sheriff has announced that he has pulled out of a federal detention agreement that has allowed the U.S. Bureau of Immigration Enforcement (ICE) to lease space in the county jail for immigration detainees. In the process, the county will forfeit about $1.9 million in annual revenues from the current ICE contract.
The sheriff’s office issued a formal statement on Wednesday that it formally ended this contractual relationship on Saturday due to a recent change in state law regarding the pretrial release and monitoring of criminal suspects.
Known as “Iryna’s Law,” this sweeping piece of state legislation was ratified by the General Assembly on September 23 in order to address a wide range of criminal justice and detention matters. [See related story this edition.] The new law’s provisions touch on everything from the death penalty to the pretrial confinement of mental patients who break the law while under involuntary commitment.
Particularly germane to the contract with ICE are restrictions on jail operations that, according to the sheriff’s office, will prevent the county from housing immigration detainees on a “space available” basis once the new rules take effect on December 1.
“These changes materially affect our ability to manage classification, housing, and supervision of detainees in our facility,” Alamance County’s sheriff Terry Johnson goes on to note in Wednesday’s announcement, “and [they] will require us to prioritize bed space and resources for local and state inmates and remain compliant with state law and court directives.”
Prior to the passage of Iryna’s Law, the sheriff’s office had an arrangement with ICE that allowed the federal agency to reserve a certain number of jail beds in the county’s detention center. This so-called “guaranteed minimum” was first introduced in 2019 when the sheriff resurrected a working relationship with ICE that he had originally brokered in 2007.
The federal agency unilaterally ended its partnership with Johnson in 2012 after the U.S Justice Department took the sheriff to court on the suspicion that he had instructed his deputies to profile Hispanic residents so they could be screened for immigration violations at the county jail. Although these allegations were thrown out by a federal judge in 2015, it several more years and change in Presidential administrations for Johnson to be restored to the federal agency’s good graces.
Under Johnson’s detention agreement with ICE, the federal agency was required to pay for every bed it reserved regardless of whether it actually needed the space for its detainees. In 2021, these guaranteed payments brought $2,463,750 into the county’s coffers after the sheriff struck a bargain with ICE that set aside 50 jail beds for the agency’s use at a per diem rate of $135 each. The detention agreement also allowed ICE to lease jail beds above and beyond the guaranteed minimum at the same per diem rate.
More recently, that minimum has been set at 40 jail beds, with $1.9 million in annual revenues to the county from ICE.
Earlier this year, Johnson announced that he was negotiating an even more lucrative deal in the midst of a precipitous spike in the federal agency’s demand for jail space. The passage of Iryna’s Law appears to have brought an abrupt end to this contract as well as its sizable contributions to the county’s general fund.
In fact, in an interview yesterday, sheriff Terry Johnson said he had been in negotiations with ICE in hopes that the federal agency might agree to fund a replacement of the roof on the state’s former prison unit in Graham.
For about a decade, the sheriff’s office used the former “prison camp” as an auxiliary jail facility that housed about 80 prisoners.
“I simply cannot take on ICE prisoners without more space,” the sheriff told the newspaper yesterday.
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Johnson said he would like to reinstitute the use of the prison camp for less violent prisoners, but noted that the current roof there leaks, making it impractical to proceed with using that facility.
“We are working our detention officers to death. We need more help with the inmates we’re holding now. We have some of them sleeping on the floor. . . which puts my people in serious danger and other problems arising with possible lawsuits.”
– Sheriff Terry Johnson to Alamance County’s commissioners, July 14, 2025
Johnson told the county’s commissioners back in July, when requesting extra bonuses to hire additional detention officers, that he was short on personnel and that the jail was crowded with prisoners. “We are working our detention officers to death,” he insisted when he appeared before the county’s governing board. “We need more help with the inmates we’re holding now. We have some of them sleeping on the floor…which puts my people in serious danger and other problems arising with possible lawsuits.”
In order to comply with strict rules ICE requires, currently dedicated jail spaces are allocated for ICE prisoners, even when those beds are not filled on a particular day. But that has caused crowded conditions for local prisoners within the jail.
The new state legislation which Johnson expects will result in more confinement for locally-accused defendants, will make the space crunch even more severe, Johnson said in the interview yesterday.
“I hate to have to cancel the contract,” Johnson said, “but we simply need more space to accommodate a [future] continuation, or reinstitution, of that contract.”
What’s the background on North Carolina’s new “Iryna’s Law” and what does it require?
Known informally as Iryna’s Law, the bill was introduced a month after the stabbing murder of Iryna Zarutska on the Charlotte mass transit system.
The new law will likely require defendants charged with violent offenses to be held longer at the jail while awaiting trial, as the sheriff alluded in his announcement Wednesday afternoon.
Iryna’s Law is intended to impose more rigorous conditions for the pretrial release of violent offenders; eliminate cashless bail; and establish new procedures for ordering mental health evaluations for certain defendants.
In particular, the law takes effect on December 1 and imposes additional requirements on judicial officers (including magistrates and judges) when considering pretrial release for defendants charged with violent offenses. There are also 18 separate offenses outlined in the law that must be heard by a judge – not a magistrate – prior to granting pretrial release.
The decision by magistrate judge Teresa Stokes to release Decarlos Brown – whose extensive criminal history included at least 14 prior arrests for felony offenses – on a written promise to appear in court for a different charge in January of 2025 drew widespread outrage in the wake of Brown’s subsequent arrest for Zarutska’s murder.
Brown was indicted in September for first-degree murder after he allegedly boarded a Charlotte light rail train and fatally stabbed 23-year-old Zarutska in the neck as she was returning home from work on August 25. The eight members of North Carolina’s Republican congressional delegation sent to Mecklenburg County’s chief district court judge, Roy H. Wiggins, a letter on September 9, demanding Stokes’ removal.
Brown is now awaiting trial for first-degree murder in Mecklenburg County and in federal court with committing an act causing death on a mass-transportation system.
