Hunter
02/23/26
Muscatine County is refusing to publicly disclose its contract to hold immigration detainees for the federal government.
Iowa Capital Dispatch reports in recent months, the County’s jail administrator has been named in five lawsuits related to the county’s agreement to jail some of the immigrants who are picked up in Iowa by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Like other Iowa counties, Muscatine County has a contract with ICE to house those individuals in return for payments from the federal government. That contract, and the county’s detention of the immigrants, have been the subject of five civil lawsuits and an alleged ethics complaint concerning former Muscatine County Attorney James Barry, who resigned last year.
Earlier this month, the website requested the contract and other records from new County Attorney Korie Talkington. After saying she would begin work on the request, she replied that the request was turned over to the Freedom of Information Act Office within ICE so they could respond. Talkington added that any future communication related to the request would come from ICE, not Muscatine County.
Iowa Capital Dispatch is objecting to the response, saying Talkington doesn’t have the power to convert an Open Records Law request into a federal FOIA request for ICE or DHS documents.
A link to the full article from Iowa Capital Dispatch is included with this story on the KCJJ website and the KCJJ app.