Saline County Sheriff Roger Soldan clarified Monday that his office is not actively assisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with locating or removing individuals from the community, following social media claims suggesting otherwise.
Sheriff Soldan confirmed that the department has entered into an ICE Warrant Service Officer (WSO) program memorandum of understanding (MOU) — a limited partnership allowing trained, certified deputies to serve and execute federal administrative warrants only on inmates already in county custody.
“The Warrant Service Officer program allows ICE to train, certify, and authorize state and local law enforcement officers to serve and execute administrative warrants on aliens in their agency’s jail,” Soldan said. “Just to clarify, I signed an MOU to allow us to serve federal warrants on inmates who are already in our custody on criminal charges. We would not be screening for citizenship or serving any warrants outside of the jail.”
Soldan also emphasized that the MOU his office signed represents one of three versions of ICE’s 287(g) program, which vary in scope and authority. The WSO model, he said, is the most limited version — confined to jail-based enforcement and does not authorize local officers to conduct community operations or immigration sweeps.
According to Soldan, ICE acknowledged receipt of the MOU in September, but training for deputies has not yet been scheduled.
Screenshots of Facebook Posts Circulating Claims About ICE Collaboration
