Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird filed a petition in Polk County District Court on Thursday, asking a judge to declare Winneshiek County in violation of Chapter 27A of Iowa Code, making it ineligible to receive any state funds. That section of Iowa Code requires every “local entity” in the state to cooperate with federal immigration agents, keep anyone for whom ICE issues a detainer order in custody until ICE removes them, 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.”)
The penalty for violating Chapter 27A, which was added to Iowa Code in 2018, is that the local entity — either a city or county — loses all state funds, until a judge determines it has made the necessary changes to bring it into compliance.
According to Bird, following an investigation by her office launched in response to a complaint by Gov. Kim Reynolds, she determined a Feb. 4 Facebook post by Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx violates Chapter 27A. The report on the investigation, published late Wednesday after by the Attorney General’s Office, concluded that Marx and the sheriff’s office are in full compliance with the law, in terms of departmental policies and interactions with ICE since the requirements on cooperation became law. But the attorney general still objects to the language Mark used in his Facebook post.
“The Sheriff posted on Facebook a message rife with legal and factual errors that discouraged enforcing immigration laws in violation of chapter 27A,” Bird asserts in the petition she filed on Thursday. “The Governor, recognizing that the post violated the law, filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office. And finding a violation, the Attorney General now sues to enforce the law.”
In his February Facebook post addressed to “People of Winneshiek County,” Marx said he wanted to address “a fair number of concerns” he heard from residents about “recent news, chatter and happenings surrounding federal agents from three letter agencies including ICE, FBI and others.”
“I share your mistrust and many of your concerns with the legitimacy of how these federal agents conduct business,” the sheriff wrote. He then explained that he and his deputies will assist ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies if requested when those agencies’ “actions and paperwork are within constitutional parameters.”
But if “their actions or paperwork are not within constitutional parameters (such as non-judicially vetted ‘detainers,’ which are very different than warrants and are simply an unconstitutional ‘request’ from ICE or other three letter federal agency to arrest or hold someone), then we will make every effort to block, interfere and interrupt their actions from moving forward.”
According to Marx’s post, “The only reason detainers are issued is because the federal agency does not have enough information or has not taken the time to obtain a valid judicial warrant… these detainers are violations of our 4th Amendment protection against warrantless search, seizure and arrest, and our 6th Amendment right to due process.”
The sheriff encouraged people to contact his office “should you find yourself or others in an encounter with any federal agents. We are always willing to assist with verifying credentials and the legitimacy of any paperwork federal agents should have to make certain your rights are not being abused.”
Marx had been with the sheriff’s office for 18 years when the Winneshiek County Board of Supervisors appointed him sheriff in 2015, after the previous sheriff retired. He was elected to the position in 2016, and reelected in 2020 and 2024.
“My job is to be fair, impartial, just and constitutional,” Marx said in his Facebook post. “Period.”
The day after Marx’s post appeared, Gov. Reynolds sent a letter to the sheriff and Winneshiek County Board of Supervisors that referenced the Facebook post and then said, “Iowa law provides that a sheriff shall not adopt or enforce a policy or take any other action under which the sheriff prohibits or discourages the enforcement of immigration law.”
The governor concluded the letter by saying, “Based on the sheriff’s posted policy this letter shall be treated as a complaint I am filing with the attorney general… Understand that a sheriff and a county can become ineligible to receive any state funds if the local entity is found to have intentionally violated the provisions of chapter 27A.”
The attorney general’s office launched an investigation of Sheriff Marx on Feb. 7. This week it published a report summarizing the findings of that investigation.
Marx and his deputies have been fully cooperating with ICE, the report published late Wednesday afternoon concluded. Since Chapter 27A was enacted in 2018, the Winneshiek County Sheriff’s Office has received 21 detainer requests from ICE, and it complied with all 21. The office’s formal written policy on immigration law enforcement is in accordance with state law. Outside of the Facebook post, the investigation found no problems.
“Sheriff Marx’s Facebook post violated Iowa Code section 27A.4 by discouraging ‘the enforcement of immigration laws,’” the report states.
“First, the Sheriff must delete the offending Facebook post,” the report states. “Second, to correct the discouragement he must make a new post.” The report then provided a 219-word-long version of what the new post should say, warning the sheriff that his post must “substantially” use the same language. The AG’s template requires the sheriff to “disavow” his earlier Facebook post, and say, “It was wrong.”
“This post serves as formal revocation of my earlier February 4, 2025 post,” the AG’s template instructs the sheriff to say.
The report, which is dated Wednesday, March 26, said that Marx had until 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, to delete his original Facebook post and then publish a Facebook post with the sort of language the attorney general wants, or “the Attorney General will file an enforcement action as required by chapter 27A.” [Bold type in the original.]
It’s not clear when the AG’s Office informed Marx of that deadline. The office published the report online at 4:44 p.m. on Wednesday, just 16 minutes ahead of the deadline.
Shortly after noon on Thursday, Marx’s Feb. 4 post was removed from the Winneshiek County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page. And at 12:14 p.m., a new post was published on the page addressing the complaint filed by Gov. Reynolds and the AG Office’s report.
“Upon the conclusion of the investigation, to prevent litigation and potential loss of state funding, the Attorney General’s Office required us to take down the original post and replace Sheriff Marx’s original statement with a statement the Attorney General’s Office had scripted,” the new post said. “The language of the post proposed by the Attorney General was not acceptable to the County. To demonstrate good faith, we chose to take the post down, and for the sake of transparency to the people of Winneshiek County, we are posting, below, our February 14, 2025, response to the AG’s request for information.”
“Sheriff Marx’s response outlines how Winneshiek County has been in compliance with Iowa Code Chapter 27A while protecting the constitutional rights of our citizens. The response also confirms the Sheriff’s Office commitment to remain in compliance with State and Federal immigration laws while staying true to the Constitutional protections afforded the citizens of Winneshiek County. “
“While we are disappointed and disagree with the Attorney General’s conclusion, we remain confident that this issue can be resolved.”
On Thursday afternoon, approximately two-and-a-half hours after the Feb. 4 post was removed and the county published its statement on Facebook, AG Bird announced she filed her petition asking the district court to cut off all state funds for Winneshiek County.
“Sheriff Marx was given the chance to fix his state-law violation, but he refused — even at a cost to his county,” Bird said in a post on X. “He left us no choice but to take the case to court to enforce the law & ensure cooperation with immigration enforcement.”
Sixteen minutes later, Gov. Kim Reynolds posted on her official X account, quote-tweeting Bird’s post.
“I applaud Attorney General Bird for taking action to uphold Iowa and federal law. Iowa passed a law banning sanctuary counties for a reason – we expect law enforcement to follow it,” Reynolds said. “We will continue working with President Trump to secure the border and keep Iowans safe.”
Neither the governor nor the attorney general acknowledged the removal of the Feb. 4 post, or Winneshiek County’s statement.
I applaud Attorney General Bird for taking action to uphold Iowa and federal law. Iowa passed a law banning sanctuary counties for a reason – we expect law enforcement to follow it. We will continue working with President Trump to secure the border and keep Iowans safe. https://t.co/ehAg8hV4aa
— Gov. Kim Reynolds (@IAGovernor) March 27, 2025
Chapter 27A was created by SF 481, which was passed by the Iowa Legislature in 2018, with only Republican support. Reynolds and the Republicans leaders in the legislature said the bill was needed to address the problem of “sanctuary cities” in Iowa, despite the fact there were no sanctuary cities in Iowa. The governor was possibly more candid about the motivation for the bill in a campaign fundraising letter she sent to supporters two months earlier, in which she said the bill was a way to “send a message to the far-left liberals in Des Moines and Iowa City.”
Reynolds was running for governor for the first time in 2018, after becoming governor when Terry Branstad resigned for a role in the first Trump administration. During the campaign she routinely appealed to fears Iowans might have about undocumented immigrants in the state.
The Iowa State Sheriffs’ & Deputies’ Association and the Iowa Police Chief Association opposed SF 481, as did then-Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and the Iowa County Attorneys Association. Law enforcement officials expressed concerns about it undermining relationships officers have with immigrant communities, as well as the added burdens of using local officers to enforce immigration laws — something that has always been the responsibility of the federal government.
Only two declarations in support of SF 481 were filed when the legislature was considering it. One came from the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, a conservative Christian political group, and the other was by the Iowa Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, which was described as a “nativist extremist” group in a 2015 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Gov. Reynolds’ Feb. 5 letter regarding Sheriff Marx’s Facebook post was the first, and so far only, time a complaint has been filed under Iowa Code Section 27A.
