An Indiana judge heard more than two hours of oral arguments on Tuesday in the last unresolved part of Attorney General Todd Rokita's lawsuit against Monroe County Sheriff Ruben Marté: whether the sheriff can prohibit his deputies from keeping people in jail past their scheduled release solely on a federal immigration detainer that is not backed by a criminal judicial warrant, the B Square Bulletin reported from the Monroe County circuit court hearing in Bloomington.

Source: B Square Bulletin

Special Judge Luke Rudisill took competing summary-judgment motions under advisement and gave both sides until Thursday, November 12, to submit proposed orders, so no ruling is expected before then. Much of his questioning returned to the "collective knowledge" doctrine — whether a county jailer may rely on a federal immigration officer's determination that there are grounds to detain someone.

An ICE detainer is a request asking a jail to hold a person — generally for up to 48 hours beyond the time they would otherwise be released — so federal immigration authorities can take custody. Sheriff Marté's position is that once the criminal-law basis for holding someone has ended, keeping the person locked up solely on an administrative immigration detainer amounts to a new seizure under the Fourth Amendment. The attorney general's office argues the sheriff's restriction violates Section 4 of Indiana Code 5-2-18.2, which bars local governments from restricting enforcement of federal immigration law below what federal law permits.

How the case narrowed to this one question

Rokita sued in July 2024 over the sheriff's immigration policy, known as MCSO-012. A consent decree signed on August 26 and approved the next day settled most of the dispute: it bars blanket restrictions on deputies communicating or cooperating with federal immigration authorities, and the attorney general's office called it a "major victory." But the decree explicitly left the detainer prohibition unresolved, and a separate Section 9 dispute remains before the Indiana Court of Appeals, the Indiana Daily Student and the Bloomingtonian reported.

Source: Indiana Daily Student

The hearing also put numbers on the local stakes. Testimony based on the sheriff's office response to a records request said that from January 2026 through the date of that response, 18 people at the Monroe County jail had been flagged through some form of immigration-related notice or paperwork; of those, six were released and then detained by ICE or an affiliated agency. The figures did not all represent formal ICE detainer requests, and the jail does not record exactly which outside agency made each arrest, the Bulletin reported.