A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by McHenry and Kankakee county officials, clearing the way to end detention of federal immigration detainees at their county jails.

       McHenry County officials said they would appeal the ruling and continue in their efforts to overturn the Illinois Way Forward Act, which prohibits county jails from being used to detain those accused of being in the country illegally.

       On average, about 180 federal detainees had been held at the McHenry jail in Woodstock this year. In the past, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid the county about $8 million a year to imprison the detainees while they waited for court hearings on their immigration cases.

       Likewise, Kankakee made about $4 million a year from jailing about 120 immigrants.

       Pulaski County recently ended its agreement with ICE. The federal agency transferred most of its 50 or so detainees to other detention centers.

       Detained immigrants into pastoral care time in the library at the McHenry County Jail on March 7, 2017 in Woodstock. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

       Advocates have argued that jailing immigrants while they wait for a hearing is cruel, tears families apart and is unnecessarily costly. A Syracuse University study found that 80% of ICE detainees have no criminal record, and many others have only minor offenses. Anyone charged with a crime goes through a different process in criminal courts.

       McHenry officials have argued that, if the jail is forced to stop holding immigrants, the federal government will simply transfer them to other jails out of state, farther from their loved ones.

       McHenry County Board Chairman Mike Buehler, a Republican from Crystal Lake, called the ruling “a blow to local governmental control, as well as the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution, against a clear case of overreach by the General Assembly and Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

       McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally and Sheriff Bill Prim, both Republicans, issued a statement noting that the county board voted 15-8 in March to continue the ICE contract. The vote came despite fierce debate amid a push by activists to end the practice.

       In May, after a push by immigration advocates in Springfield, Pritzker signed into law the act to prohibit jails from keeping immigrants.

       “The Illinois Way Forward Act is another example of how the current legislative assembly is likely one of the most partisan and dogmatically rigid in Illinois history,” the statement by Kenneally and Prim read, “... a legislative assembly that has precious little time for the perspectives of the residents in outlying counties like McHenry and Kankakee.”

       rmccoppin@chicagotribune.com

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