Las Vegas Sheriff Does Not Want To Help Trump With "Roundups"

But he says Las Vegas Metro reports immigrants to ICE

The top law enforcement officer in Las Vegas joined his predecessor and now Republican Governor of Nevada in distancing himself from President Trump’s threats of a mass deportation. That might matter because Las Vegas has one of the largest undocumented populations of any city in the United States.

In an interview with News 8, Sheriff Kevin McMahill said, “Roundups out in the community and those kinds of things, that’s not my job. I have too much to do.” Similar to comments last week from Republican Governor (and former Clark County Sheriff) Joe Lombardo, McMahill questioned whether ICE has the resources to ramp up deportations.

Politically, Lombardo and McMahill’s comments are interesting signals in a swing state with the largest per capita undocumented population in the country, according to Pew.

Although rejected this idea of Metro officers participating in arresting immigrants on immigration grounds McMahill describes a policy that he said he issued in 2023:

“If you’re foreign-born, you’re arrested for a violent felony, DUI, or domestic violence, we will run you through the system.”

He said he put that policy in place when he took office in 2023, though I am not aware of it having been disclosed publicly before. I could not find it on Metro’s website.

It’s not the policy I would enact. Among other things, I don’t think families should be broken up over a single DUI arrest. DUI is dangerous, but it is not more dangerous because the papers the driver has or doesn’t have. And taking a parent from their child after a single DUI arrest — which is what this policy would do — will do more harm than good.

There are also specific problems for domestic violence victims with reporting people arrested for DV for deportation, though they seem counterintuitive to many people. It is not unusual for victims of domestic violence to be initially arrested, because it may be hard for the police on the scene to determine who was the primary aggressor in a domestic struggle. As the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence recently wrote:

Unfortunately, immigrant victims are particularly vulnerable to being arrested and prosecuted for domestic violence if they acted in self-defense or are accused by an abuser of being a primary aggressor. A well-known tactic of abusers to maintain power and control over their victims is to report (and threaten to report) their partner to authorities, including local law enforcement, child protective services, ICE, and others–falsely claiming that their partner (the victim of their violence) is the one who is violent, neglectful, etc. These false reports (and the threats of them) are too often highly effective at keeping victims trapped in violent relationships. 

As an attorney, I can tell you that the risk of being arrested and deported makes it harder to convince immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence to turn to the police for help. I hope Sheriff McMahill might reconsider this.

All that said, clarity from the police matters. Publishing this policy would be a good idea for Metro. Moreover, McMahill was effectively endorsing the principle of having enforcement priorities in deportation policy — a policy that Presidents Obama and Biden enacted but that President Trump rescinded on his first day.