With 27% of its citizens being foreign-born, Gwinnett is the most immigrant-heavy county in the metro area, according to U.S. Census data. DeKalb County comes next, with over 17% of its citizens being foreign-born. In the second quarter of 2025, the county jail received 190 detainer requests from ICE, compared to 32 in the last quarter of 2024.
By the middle of this year, there were 90 detainers in Whitfield County, which is home to the predominantly Hispanic town of Dalton, up from 30 at the end of 2024.
According to Gigi Pedraza, executive director of the Latino Community Fund in Atlanta, “it feels like open season to many of us.”
Driving without a license was the most frequent infraction for foreign nationals arrested in Gwinnett’s jail thus far this year. Information about the type of criminal offenses committed by immigrant inmates was not made public by any other county in metro Atlanta.
Changes in federal and state immigration laws are the cause of the spike in ICE detainers.
Georgia approved a law last year mandating that sheriff’s offices flag inmates who could be in the country illegally and try to confirm the immigration status of those booked into county jails or municipal detention facilities. In the meantime, as it looks to increase the number of immigrants detained and deported, ICE seems more inclined to request detainers. The Trump administration increased ICE’s daily arrest quota from 1,000 to 3,000 earlier this spring.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan stated that ICE’s preferred method of making arrests is to pick up immigrants in local prisons.
He stated that if given the option, he would much rather be incarcerated because it is safer for the community, the officer, and the general public.
ICE requests that jailers hold immigrants for up to 48 hours after their scheduled release time when it files a detainer. Local law enforcement organizations are free to decide whether or not to follow ICE detainers, as they are not legally binding.
However, Georgia lost that discretion when the 2024 immigration bill was passed. The statute, HB 1105, states that sheriff’s offices are required to honor, comply with, and carry out ICE’s detainer requests.
Following HB 1105, ICE and local police enforcement worked closely together, as demonstrated by the well-known case of Mario Gueva, a Spanish-speaking journalist from the area.
Thanks to Mario Guevara for this.
Thanks to Mario Guevara for this.
While photographing police at an anti-ICE demonstration, Guevara was detained and sent to the DeKalb County Jail on June 14. ICE had filed a detainer, which DeKalb officials honored, thus Guevara was unable to leave until his lawyers successfully petitioned the DeKalb County Magistrate Court for a bond.
Soon after, Guevara was taken by federal officials. Despite having a valid work permit, the journalist has been in immigration custody for more than a month and is in danger of being deported to his native El Salvador.
Although Georgia sheriffs must comply with the increasing volume of ICE detainers, it is unclear if immigration officers can consistently pick up people within 48 hours. Some sheriffs claimed that ICE did not pick up prisoners for whom they had issued detainers under Biden.
An ICE spokesman from Atlanta stated in a 2024 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the organization had to give priority to cases that posed the greatest risk to public safety due to its limited resources.
An inquiry by the AJC regarding ICE’s present capacity to carry out its expanding detainer requests was not answered by the agency. ICE has been picking up persons with detainers, according to representatives from the Fulton and DeKalb sheriff’s offices; neither the Cobb nor the Gwinnett sheriff’s offices provided information on the subject.
In an email, Georgia Sheriffs Association deputy executive director Mike Mitchell stated that he was unaware of any problems with ICE capturing people who had been the subject of detainer petitions.
The GALEO Impact Fund, which aims to increase Latino political power in Georgia, is led by Jerry Gonzalez.
Close coordination between local sheriffs and federal immigration officials may discourage immigrant people from assisting police in reporting crimes or suspicious activities, he said, calling the state’s increase in ICE detainers a troubling trend.
According to him, our communities will become less safe overall if community policing fails. The decline in trust will have major repercussions for police departments and local governments. Rebuilding the trust that our communities have in law enforcement will need years or possibly decades of effort.
