‘How do I have an ICE hold, when I’m Native American?’

Earlier this week, Jacobo was preparing to leave the Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, after serving 60 days for a traffic infraction.

“I was excited to get out to my family,” she told Buffalo’s Fire. “I’d not seen them in quite a while. I was very excited. Then I got the news that some things were coming up, and I had an ICE hold on me.”

Jacobo, who lives in Iowa, is a citizen of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, which is headquartered in Arizona. Native people are officially recognized as U.S. citizens, and tribal IDs are a form of legal documentation.

“I was scared. I was nervous,” said Jacobo. “I didn’t know what was going to happen or what was going to go on. The jail itself, I tried to get information. They were not actually helpful at all.”

Behind the scenes, Jacobo’s mom, Ericka Burns, had arrived at the jail earlier to learn the process for picking up her daughter. Burns’s sister, Maria Nunez, said staff told Burns that Jacobo was not going to be released at midnight on Veterans Day as scheduled, because she was going to be transferred to ICE custody.

“So my sister jumped on it right away,” said Nunez. “And being a holiday that day, we couldn’t do much. And on her reservation side of the family, we just jumped on the media and reached out to everyone we could. Because we didn’t want her removed and sent to who knows where.”

Online, people called on SRPMIC leaders to intervene. Jacobo’s photo and story were shared across social media, generating buzz and media attention.

Back at the jail, Jacobo was having trouble getting information from the staff.

“I was like, ‘How do I have an ICE hold, when I’m Native American?’ she told Buffalo’s Fire. “It was just weird. It was just crazy.”

Jacobo said the officers in the jail were “quite rude” and seemed like they didn’t want to help or give any information, adding to her confusion and anxiety. A recent analysis by ProPublica shows that ICE has rounded up and detained more than 170 U.S. citizens this year.

Meanwhile, calls and shows of support began to increase for the family. Nunez says Walter Holloway, the SRPMIC chief of police, called the Polk County Sheriff’s Office to vouch for Jacobo being Native and then called again later to make sure she was released. A local investigator discovered that another inmate at the jail also had the last name Jacobo, prompting Burns to stay at the jail with a copy of her daughter’s birth certificate. With Jacobo’s day of release being a federal holiday, many lines of communication were inactive, but efforts to get her released pressed on.

Jacobo’s family learned that an ICE detainer — sometimes called an immigration hold — had been intended for the inmate with the same last name. Detainers are issued to state and local law enforcement agencies with the aim of having people held for up to 48 hours past their scheduled release so ICE can decide whether to take them into custody for the purpose of deportation. The agencies are not required to comply, and some groups have claimed their use is unconstitutional.

Lt. Mark Chase of Polk County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that there was another inmate at the jail with the last name of Jacobo, and said a clerical mix-up occurred. He told Buffalo’s Fire that the command staff has been talked to about the incident and given instructions to “double, triple check information” going forward.

Jacobo said she was finally released around 3 a.m. on Wednesday, 27 hours past her original release time.

“I’m very thankful for having family members and people out here, because who knows what would have happened,” she said. “It would have been a scary moment. I thank my family and my community for being behind me and getting on top of it. Because if I didn’t have anyone, it could have gone very differently.”

Both Jacobo and Nunez say Jacobo was subject to racial profiling and more needs to be done to keep other citizens — including Natives — from being wrongfully targeted.

“They need to be more educated,” said Jacobo. “And I feel like people need to be more aware. It can happen to anyone — and doesn’t need to happen again.”

“It’s bad that us Native Americans, we have to be targeted,” said Nunez. “It’s a big, ugly thing, and it’s a very scary thing.”

Since the Trump administration has dramatically cracked down on undocumented immigrants this year, a number of tribes have issued alerts about their citizens being confronted by ICE personnel. Many have provided guidance on what documentation to carry and what rights tribal citizens have if they’re taken into custody.

Yet situations like Jacobo’s can still happen. She had her tribal ID with her, and the county had her fingerprints and social security number on record.

Nunez said community members were planning to protest outside the Polk County jail if Jacobo had been turned over to ICE, and she’s relieved that wasn’t necessary. She said her niece is preparing to take legal action for her detainment and the threat of deportation from her own country.

“I feel like they’re trying to sweep it under the carpet, kind of just like, ‘Oh, OK, it was just a simple error. And let’s just forget about it,’” said Jacobo. “And I don’t want that to happen. I feel like the system needs to be more careful. Just the whole racial thing, it’s unacceptable.”

Jacobo’s story continues to spread on social media. A Facebook post by Occupy Democrats says, “This is what happens when an agency like ICE is given unchecked power — where ‘clerical errors’ can destroy lives, and where systemic racism and dehumanization are written into the paperwork. If her family hadn’t fought like hell, Leticia Jacobo could have been vanished into ICE custody — another name lost in a broken, brutal system.”

Neither the SRPMIC nor the Des Moines ICE office responded to requests for comment by press time.