The sheriff of Marion County is an elected Democrat serving in an overwhelmingly blue city.
But he says his politics and values cannot affect his decision to allow U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents to detain hundreds of people in the local jail.
“My personal beliefs and religious convictions do not override my sworn duty as it relates to immigration matters,” Sheriff Kerry Forestal wrote in a May 14 letter to Mirror Indy, in part. “Law enforcement officers cannot routinely pick and choose what laws they will enforce and what laws they will ignore.”
That answer doesn’t sit well with local immigration attorneys, advocates and faith leaders. They acknowledge they will never convince leading Republicans like Gov. Mike Braun to halt their participation in President Donald Trump’s promise to carry out “the largest deportation program" in American history.
But some held hope that top Democratic leaders, like Forestal and Mayor Joe Hogsett, would use their power to stand up for their constituents in Indianapolis. And, they say, the sheriff’s cooperation with the Trump administration goes beyond simply complying with the federal government.
Tensions have risen as more details of a contract between the sheriff’s office and the U.S. Marshals Service come to light. The agreement enables the federal government to use the local jail to house federal detainees, including those arrested by ICE.
Some version of that agreement has been on the books since 1996, the sheriff told Mirror Indy, across five presidents and four sheriffs. He also noted Braun issued an executive order in January telling state law enforcement agencies to "fully cooperate with ICE." The governor requested that local law enforcement agencies do the same.
Local immigration attorneys say, however, it was previously rare for ICE to hold more than a few people at a time here. And even then, it was typically for two days or less.
That’s changed under the second Trump administration.
More than 400 people from 29 countries have been held in the Marion County Jail following arrests by ICE this year, according to documents obtained by Mirror Indy in a public records request.
Some have been locked up for months. And while some are facing separate criminal charges, according to a Mirror Indy review of court records and news articles, many appear to be detained solely because of their immigration status.
The changes this year have resulted in the local jail essentially becoming a “pit stop” for ICE, said Hannah Cartwright, a local immigration attorney.
What’s happening in Indianapolis, she said, is a snapshot of ICE’s widening network across the country, with more county jails becoming entwined with a machine meant to remove people from the country faster than ever.
She emphasized that Trump’s acting ICE director has said he wanted the deportation process to be “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.”
“They’re expanding their tentacles into our community,” said Cartwright, the co-founder of Mariposa Legal, a nonprofit that represents people in ICE custody. “Trump has been able to use the system that was already there and beef it up.”
So while it’s true that the sheriff’s office has an agreement with the federal government, Cartwright and other advocates note there’s a way out: The contract renews every 100 days unless the sheriff requests to terminate it.
But Forestal hasn’t ended the contract. The attorneys and advocates wonder if that’s because the federal government is paying the Marion County Sheriff’s Office at a time of increasing financial pressures for the office.
And one reason why Democratic-controlled Indianapolis would be so attractive to the Trump administration and ICE?
The jail here is new, with plenty of room.
‘Families are being torn apart’
For years, Marion County faced an overcrowding crisis in its jails.
But the new jail — opened in 2022 as part of the $600 million Community Justice Campus — has the capacity to hold 3,000 people.
The jail, built in the Twin Aire neighborhood on the east side, was the result of Mayor Joe Hogsett's push for criminal justice reform during his first term in office.
“We will value people over prisons,” Hogsett, a Democrat, said in 2017, “futures over jail beds.”
Now, the facility is being used to hold immigrants dressed in black-and-white striped jumpsuits.
The public records obtained by Mirror Indy list each person’s name, country of origin and release date — but not what criminal charges, if any, they are facing. An ICE spokesperson did not respond to Mirror Indy’s questions about that. That information isn’t publicly available in the jail’s online database, either.
Mirror Indy found that some are facing serious charges in Indiana, including child molestation and domestic battery. The White House also has accused one man, who is facing federal charges, of being a member of a violent gang from Venezuela.
Other detainees face less severe allegations, such as driving without a license, disorderly conduct or traffic violations.
Many do not appear to face any charges at all — beyond their immigration status, which is generally a civil matter, not a criminal one.
Some appeared virtually from the jail on May 9 before a New York immigration judge, who presided over their bond hearings and removal proceedings. A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, a branch of the U.S. Department of Justice that oversees immigration courts, said the out-of-state judge is helping with caseloads in Indiana.
During the hearings, a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security argued with local immigration attorneys about their clients’ histories and pushed for higher bonds, if one was available at all. One man, records show, has spent at least 89 days detained in the Marion County Jail.
The federal government also picked the countries where people would go after deportation.
Local advocates say it's ironic these proceedings are happening at a facility built on promises of reform.
“Families are being torn apart in a center that is marketed as healing and restorative,” said Josh Riddick, an advocate from the Black Church Coalition, a group that protested at the jail in late March.
Karla López Owens, the president of the Indiana Latino Democratic Caucus, criticized her own party’s role.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a Republican or a Democrat administration,” she said. “You’re always going to have money-hungry people who will do anything in their power to expand these systems for profits.”
Through a spokesperson, Hogsett said the jail was not built for solely housing immigrant detainees — and what’s happening there now with ICE is “the responsibility of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.”
A ‘backdoor’ for ICE
A lawyer for the sheriff’s office acknowledged that ICE detainments are up, but said he did not know the reasons why people are being held or what happens to them once they leave the jail, such as whether they are being transferred to another facility or if they’re being deported from Marion County.
An ICE spokesperson did not respond to Mirror Indy’s questions about the federal government’s agreement with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
Mirror Indy found detainees in the local jail who are miles away from their homes in Ohio, Kentucky and New York.
Cartwright, the immigration attorney, said Indianapolis residents should have a say about how their jail is being used — which she says usually happens when ICE proposes a direct contract with a county.
Here, though, the sheriff’s office’s agreement with the federal government is through the U.S. Marshals Service.
“The Marshals contract is a backdoor to being able to hold people for ICE,” she said. “It’s circumventing the public process.”
Emma Mahern, an immigration attorney with Muñoz Legal LLC in Indianapolis, said the contract was originally meant to make it easier to transport federal detainees from the jail to hearings at the federal courthouse downtown.
“The whole purpose has been swallowed by ICE,” Mahern said. “And if that’s not the will of the voters of Marion County, the sheriff should be looking at how he can remove himself from that situation.”
Mirror Indy asked the sheriff why he continues the contract, especially when it’s being used differently now by ICE.
Forestal declined a Mirror Indy request for an interview but provided answers to written questions in a letter.
“The answer is I take my pledge to God to uphold the law most solemnly,” Forestal wrote in his letter.
Advocates acknowledged that Indiana law requires law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE. But by indefinitely holding people detained through Trump’s deportation operation, they said, the sheriff has gone beyond merely complying.
“Other sheriffs around the state are not doing this,” said the Rev. Carolyn Higginbotham, a faith leader and organizer with Live Free Indiana. “He’s making a choice. And we think it’s the wrong one for the safety of our community.”
She was among several advocates who pointed to another factor: money.
Sheriff’s office faces a ‘triple whammy’
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office said it has faced years of financial uncertainty, putting staffing and people in jail at risk.
In a January 2025 letter obtained by Mirror Indy, a lawyer for the sheriff’s office blamed the City-County Council for decades of underfunding, which created conditions that violated constitutional rights of people incarcerated in the jail.
He also pointed to another revenue loss: A new federal policy that limits the amount that jails can charge for phone calls placed to and from people in the jail. The sheriff’s office expects to lose about $2 million this year.
“The day-to-day operations of the jail are demanding, and finances are difficult enough,” the attorney, Kevin Murray, wrote in the letter to a councilor.
And something else made the situation a “triple whammy,” he said: The Indiana Department of Correction owes the sheriff’s office more than $1 million for using the jail to hold some people on behalf of the state. Payments from the IDOC stopped in April 2024, Murray wrote. The agency ran out of state funding this year, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.
But in the Marshals Service contract, the federal government offers Marion County a higher rate to keep its detainees: $75 per day for each person.
That’s double what the state pays.
“The payments from ICE are much more appropriate than the $37.50 per inmate the state of Indiana pays,” a spokesperson for the sheriff said in a May 9 statement to Mirror Indy.
The sheriff’s office said it collected $150,000 from ICE payments in March. Earning that much each month would make up the deficit owed by the state by the end of the year. The IDOC did not respond to Mirror Indy’s request for comment.
In a statement, the sheriff’s office emphasized that the jail is not making a profit from the ICE payments and all money goes back into the Indianapolis general fund. The sheriff also pointed out that some portion of the new jail was always meant to house federal detainees.
But Cartwright said she’s seen this scenario before. In Clay County just east of Terre Haute, the sheriff and other county leaders were sued in 2022 over allegations that they used an ICE contract as a “cash cow” to fill gaps in the county budget.
“Marion County has admitted they are down money,” Cartwright said. “But ICE payments aren’t meant to subsidize local budget constraints.”
Above all, attorneys and advocates told Mirror Indy they were concerned that people detained by ICE in the county jail were not receiving due process — especially when ICE agents can abruptly move people to other facilities around the country.
“We spend a lot of time tracking down our clients,” Mahern said. “If there are more beds, this administration will fill them.”
Democratic U.S. Rep André Carson pointed to the case of Amner Nunez-Vasquez, a Honduran man who was forcibly removed from his vehicle by federal agents in Indianapolis earlier this year.
Nunez-Vasquez, who has no known criminal record, was sent to the Clay County Jail. In an immigration hearing last month, his lawyers argued he was wrongfully detained due to a clerical error, the IndyStar reported.
And then there’s the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was later found by the U.S. Supreme Court to be wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador. So far, the Trump administration has defied a judge’s order to return him.
“These aren’t just mistakes,” Carson told Mirror Indy. “They’re the direct results of policies.”
This article first appeared on Mirror Indy and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
