There’s a debate across the country about how much local officials should cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. It’s come into sharp focus in Benzie County, where Sheriff Ted Schendel has proclaimed he’ll do whatever he can to assist.

As Patrick Sullivan writes in this week's Northern Express - sister publication of The Ticker - Schendel is in some ways no different than other sheriffs in Michigan who comply when requested to hold suspected noncitizens for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for up to 48 hours.

But Schendel, who identifies himself as a “constitutional sheriff,” has some residents and immigrant-rights activists concerned that he’s willing to go much further and interpret the law so that he can enact a right-wing agenda.

Residents point as an example to an arrest in Benzie County on April 22. Late at night, a deputy pulled over a Mexican citizen for speeding and arrested him for drunk driving. Two days later, the man was turned over to ICE, and within days he was deported, says Father Wayne Dziekan, a priest who works with the migrant community through Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Traverse City.

Dziekan says that deportation wouldn’t have happened in some other places, because it's optional for sheriff’s departments to cooperate with ICE requests, and the way ICE seeks to hold some suspected noncitizens might be unconstitutional.

“ICE holds have been found to be in violation of the Constitution in nine federal jurisdictions around the country, but the Benzie sheriff believes in his own interpretation of the Constitution, not what any court, judge, or law might say,” Dziekan says. Schendel has publicly stated that as sheriff, he is the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution in his county, and has gone so far to say he would not enforce federal laws or Supreme Court rulings that conflicted with his own interpretation of the Constitution. Schendel later walked back some of those comments in an interview with the Northern Express.

Dziekan believes local law enforcement shouldn’t be enmeshed with immigration enforcement. The migrant community needs to be able to trust local law enforcement so that they will report crimes and cooperate in investigations, he says. Additionally, the criminal justice system is set up for the express purpose of deterring and punishing crime. When someone is arrested for drunk driving, they should be charged with drunk driving; officers should patrol and enforce the laws “without giving one hoot” about immigration status, he says.

Under Schendel, Benzie County has become what many say is the opposite of a sanctuary city, a place where police and officials ignore immigration status in the interest of calming fears in immigrant communities. In Benzie County, if you are not in the country legally, and you have contact with the police, there is a good chance you will be turned over to ICE and deported. Schendel is willing to go further than detaining suspected noncitizens when they have committed crimes; he says his deputies would detain a passenger in a vehicle that’s been pulled over for a traffic stop if ICE wants that person.

Although it has not yet happened in Benzie County, the detention of someone who had not otherwise committed a crime seems to cross from a gray area into a clear violation of constitutional rights, says Marcelo Nazario Betti, a Traverse City attorney who specializes in immigration law. Betti said the degree to which Schendel believes officers should check immigration status and detain people for ICE sets him apart.

“That to me is the part that I think is really questionable,” he says. “That is the part that sounds to me like local law enforcement overstepping their bounds.”

Schendel, meanwhile, defends his actions, saying his and other agencies have been asked for help by the federal government. "Why wouldn’t we assist them in completing their tasks?” he says. Schendel says an added bonus to this mode of enforcement is that he believes it causes noncitizens to be on their best behavior so they don’t come into contact with police.

Read more about the controversy over immigration enforcement in Benzie County in this week's Northern Express story, "There's a Constitutional Sheriff in Town." The Northern Express is available to read online, or pick up a copy at one of nearly 700 other spots in 14 counties across northern Michigan.