On Friday, Attorney General Brenna Bird dropped her lawsuit over a February Facebook post by Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx. Bird had been seeking to strip Winneshiek County of all state funds, unless Marx publicly disowned his Facebook post and declared his support for ICE enforcement actions, using language provided by the AG’s office.
Bird filed the lawsuit against Winneshiek County after Gov. Kim Reynolds filed a complaint about Marx’s Feb. 4 post, in which the sheriff told county residents he shared their concerns about “three letter agencies including ICE,” and said he and his deputies would not assist ICE if they were asked to do something Marx considered unconstitutional. In her complaint, Reynolds said Marx had violated Iowa Code section 27A, which requires every “local entity” to cooperate with ICE, keep anyone for whom the agency issues a detainer order and “not adopt or enforce a policy or take any other action under which the local entity prohibits or discourages the enforcement of immigration laws.” (A “local entity” is defined as “the governing body of a city or county… [including] an officer or employee of a local entity or a division, department, or other body.”)
That section of Iowa Code was created when Reynolds signed SF 481 into law in 2018. According to the governor and the Republicans in the Iowa Legislature who passed the bill, it was needed to address the problem of “sanctuary cities” in Iowa, even though there were no sanctuary cities in Iowa. Of course, 2018 was an election year, and Reynolds and other Republicans running for office that year appealed to fears about immigrants as part of their campaigns.
If a judge finds a local entity has violated 27A, its county will lose all state funding until a court decides it is complying fully with the law.
An investigation by Bird’s office after the AG’s office sued to strip Winneshiek County of state funding found Marx and his deputies had cooperated with ICE whenever asked to do so, and the sheriff said it was his department’s policy to continue that cooperation, but Marx rejected using the language Bird mandated.
Attorneys for Marx called Bird’s demand he use the language she pre-approved as “nothing more than thought policing” in a court filing in May, and argued “there is no statutory support to compel Sheriff Marx to post the Attorney General and Governor’s proposed retraction language.”
In a court filing last month, opposing Marx’s request to have the case dismissed, Bird’s office argued that even though the sheriff had deleted the original Facebook post and issued a new statement saying he would cooperate with ICE, that wasn’t enough to undo the damage caused by the Feb. 4 post. Until the sheriff used the AG’s approved language, “the discouragement caused by the initial post remains ongoing.”
Furthermore, Bird’s attorneys argued, even if Marx immediately came into compliance, Winnishiek County should still be punished, because state law “requires a state-funds denial whenever Chapter 27A is violated — no matter whether the violation persists throughout the litigation” and “does not allow a petition for reinstatement [of funds] until ‘no earlier than ninety days after the date of a final judicial determination.’”
The attorney general did not mention any of that in her statement on Friday, Nor did she mention that Marx had never made a statement using the language she insisted on.
Instead, Bird simply declared, “Winneshiek County has now fully complied with 27A… Winneshiek County and Sheriff Marx are in compliance with 27A. They have committed to continue to honor ICE detainers and cooperate with federal immigration authorities.”
Sheriff Marx issued a statement after Bird announced she was dropping the case. He also didn’t mention his refusal to use the language Bird wanted.
“Recently I had a face-to-face meeting with Attorney General Bird,” the sheriff said. “During our meeting, I explained it was never my intent to discourage immigration enforcement. We have always complied with ICE detainers and will continue to comply with Iowa code section 27A and encourage immigration enforcement under our written policies.”
When she filed the complaint over Marx’s Facebook post, Reynolds was still considered a candidate for reelection next year. It wasn’t until two months after filing the complaint that the governor announced she wouldn’t be running again. Bird, after considering a run for governor following Reynolds’ announcement, decided to run for another term as attorney general instead.
