Approximately 40 immigration activists protested Freeborn County’s contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Sunday outside the Freeborn County jail, demanding that deportations end and Freeborn County break its contract with ICE.

Activists with the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee and the Unlawful Assembly Marching Band traveled via caravan from Minneapolis to Freeborn County to offer moral support to ICE detainees and other inmates inside the detention center with banners, chants and music, a press release from the action committee states.

“The rally demanded that Minnesota counties stop profiting off of contracts with ICE and deporting members of our communities,” the statement reads.

“Stories were shared that denounced ICE for its practices of breaking up families, brutalizing those it detains and forcibly removing people to life-threatening situations in their countries of origin. Local law enforcement was critiqued for using racist policing tactics to profile, detain and deport immigrants, producing profit by trafficking in human lives.”

Freeborn County Sheriff Kurt Freitag said he does not plan on canceling the county’s ICE contract, saying ICE focuses its efforts on detaining criminal illegal immigrants. He disputed the organization’s assertion that law enforcement is producing profit by trafficking human lives.

“If we have people in our country illegally, that is a crime,” he said. “That is a felony, and we need immigrants to gain access to our country legally. We have set laws in place.”

Freitag said he would like to expedite the immigration process for immigrants who are good people.

Freitag said statements in the press release were “packed full of hyberbole,” saying ICE follows set laws, and detainees who are illegal immigrants are breaking up their own families by becoming subject to deportation.

“We take excellent care of the ICE detainees that we have,” he said. “We don’t brutalize anybody.”

He said anyone who is in a life-threatening situation in their home country can ask for asylum, and he disputed statements that local law enforcement officers are using racist police tactics. 

“They are making stuff up as they go,” he said of the activist organization.

Immigration activists demanded Minnesota become a sanctuary state by refusing to cooperate with ICE statewide.