Immigration fight spills into Henderson City Hall as ICE deal draws fire

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

As cities across the country reassess their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, Henderson has become Nevada’s newest flashpoint — with residents urging the city council to sever its partnership that lets U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold detainees in the local jail.

The topic wasn’t listed on Tuesday’s council agenda, but it dominated the meeting as more than 30 people, many from local immigrant- and civil-rights groups, lined up for more than 90 minutes of public comment. They called for an end to a 2010 agreement between the city and the U.S. Marshals Service that allows federal immigration authorities to house detainees at the Henderson Detention Center.

Council members listened but did not address the contract, which has become a growing point of contention as advocates raise concerns about detention conditions, civil rights and the economic value of the deal.

For years, the agreement has generated millions in city revenue, but activists now argue that continuing it comes at a moral cost.

“Keeping this contract is not keeping us safe,” said Alex Pereszlenyi, who helped organize residents to attend Tuesday’s meeting and is mounting a challenge for the Democratic nomination in Assembly District 29. “We need leaders who lead now more than ever before. And if we open our history textbooks, it’s not too late to do the right thing. You all have a choice to be on the right side or the wrong side of history, and we are all watching.”

Others shared personal stories that underscored the tension between community trust and federal enforcement. Dr. Marcela Rodriguez-Campo, who was born in Colombia and has lived in Henderson most of her life, said she was “heartbroken” that her city continues to house immigration detainees.

“Even though I’m a U.S. citizen, I’ve witnessed how across the country, people who merely look like me are being picked up and disappeared off the street,” she said. “It is something that is happening here in our community as well.”

Speakers described fear and uncertainty among immigrants spreading through their neighborhoods, while a few attendees — some wearing conservative group apparel — defended the contract as a matter of law and order.

Kimberly Johnston, a Henderson resident, dismissed the outcry as “a bunch of nonsense” and accused opponents of being “paid agitators.”

“I love my state. I love my country,” Johnston said. “I refuse to sit here and be steamrolled over by a few people who have nothing else better to do on a Tuesday afternoon than to come here and tell you about how I feel about law and order in my city.”

The clash captured Henderson’s divide over immigration enforcement, mirroring national debates that have intensified under President Donald Trump’s second term.

Several speakers belonged to local advocacy groups, including the Las Vegas chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, which is organizing against ICE agreements. Others rejected claims they were paid to attend.

ICE uses three facilities in Nevada to house detainees, with the Henderson Detention Center having an average daily population of 93 people, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. That puts it second only to the Nevada Southern Detention Center in Pahrump.

The agreement has also historically been to Henderson’s financial benefit. In 2013, the Sun reported that holding the detainees made the city somewhere between $4 million and $7 million a year. Attendees disputed whether that was still true today, saying that the city loses money on the agreement.

This isn’t the first time the memorandum of understanding between Henderson and the Marshals Service has been the subject of controversy.

In 2022, the Department of Homeland Security told ICE that it was looking into complaints alleging the agency had “potentially violated the civil rights and civil liberties of its detainees at the Henderson Detention Center.”

The four complaints DHS provided stated that the detention center denied access to toilet paper and medication, issued “excess restrictions” on visitation and that “disciplinary sanctions included denial of basic cell furnishings.”

A decade earlier, the UNLV Immigration Clinic alleged that the detention center failed to provide proper access to legal help and medical care.

The safety of people in detention facilities has come into focus across the country during President Donald Trump’s second term. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year, with another four dying in the first 10 days of 2026, according to multiple reports.

“When is enough enough?” local veteran Dutch Harbour asked the city council. “How many more people need to die at detention centers before this board sees an issue? How many more people need to be dragged out of their cars and beaten up before we start taking action?”

Advocacy efforts extend beyond Tuesday’s meeting.

The Nevada Immigrant Coalition is gathering petition signatures against the agreement and is requesting meetings with council members, said Noé Orosco, the coalition’s coordinator.

“A lot of the community that was speaking, they were saying that here in Nevada, we are not seeing (enforcement) to the same levels (of other parts of the country), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we will not get to that level,” he said.

ICE’s “Operation Metro Surge,” its ongoing deployment in Minnesota, was a common thread in comments to the city council. Along with decrying the operation itself, many speakers denounced the Trump administration’s defense of the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother, in her car Jan. 7, with one calling it a “cold-blooded murder.”

Bethany Scribner, a Henderson resident of two years who previously spent nearly a decade in Minneapolis, told the council she had seen firsthand how federal immigration actions could ripple through a community.

She said ICE’s presence in her former city suppressed free speech and eroded due process, warning Henderson residents not to take those rights for granted.

Several speakers also connected their appeals to Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance, framing the issue as part of a broader fight for justice. Brian Harris, founder of the Independent Black Voters group, urged the council to reflect on King’s legacy and the moral weight of their decisions.

“Know your history. Know American history. Fascism is here,” Harris said. “If our cities don’t stand up against it — if Henderson doesn’t say no — then we are doomed.”

[email protected] / 702-990-8923 / @Kyle_Chouinard