An ICE arrest detainer is a written request from federal immigration officers asking a jail or other law‑enforcement agency to: (1) tell ICE when they plan to release a person, and (2) hold that person for up to 48 hours after they would otherwise be released so ICE can come take custody.
The legal authority comes from federal immigration regulations (8 C.F.R. § 287.7) and ICE’s general power to detain people who are removable under immigration law. But the detainer itself is not a court order, and ICE now explicitly describes it as a request, not a command. Local agencies that choose to honor it may lawfully keep someone up to 48 extra hours (excluding weekends/holidays) so ICE can pick them up; beyond that, keeping the person jailed can violate the Fourth Amendment and expose the agency to lawsuits.
“Sanctuary policies” are local or state rules that limit how much police, jails, or other local agencies help enforce federal civil immigration law. Common examples include:
Jurisdictions can decline ICE detainers mainly because:
When ICE lodges a detainer, the typical sequence is:
In this Indiana incident, local media and DHS indicate the men are charged under Indiana law and that ICE has placed “deportation holds” (detainers); there is no public indication yet of separate federal indictments.
Based on available public information, only state/local charges are currently known to be pending.
Indiana State Police and local coverage report that Gurpreet Singh and Jasveer Singh were charged in Putnam County with dealing in cocaine and possession of cocaine under Indiana law, and that ICE placed “deportation holds” on both men. Neither the DHS press release nor Indiana news reports mention any federal narcotics indictment or separate federal immigration charges. If federal charges are later filed, they had not been publicly reported as of the dates cited.
In this press release, DHS uses “criminal illegal alien” as a policy and messaging term, not a precisely defined statute.
From the context, DHS is referring to:
ICE and DHS often use similar language in press materials for noncitizens who are both removable under immigration law and have criminal arrests or convictions, even though immigration law itself uses more specific terms like “removable alien” or “alien convicted of an aggravated felony.”
The numbers come from a simple but highly simplified calculation that assumes a fixed “minimal lethal dose” of cocaine per person:
The DHS Indiana release rounds this to “more than 113,000 Americans.” This framing assumes every gram is pure, used in a single dose, and affects different people identically—which is not how overdoses actually work, but it is how DHS arrives at the headline risk figure.
Under current California law, someone who cannot prove lawful presence in the U.S. can get only a regular (non‑commercial) driver’s license under AB 60, not a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL).
Key points:
Therefore, if Gurpreet Singh and Jasveer Singh were in the U.S. unlawfully as DHS claims yet held California CDLs, that would mean either (a) they previously had some form of lawful status that allowed them to qualify at the time, or (b) there were errors or fraud in how the licenses were issued. Public records on this case do not yet clarify which of these is true.
According to Indiana authorities and local reporting, the traffic stop and inspection were conducted by the Indiana State Police Putnamville District, not a federal agency. An Indiana State Police trooper stopped the semi‑tractor trailer on Interstate 70 for a routine truck/compliance inspection and lane‑drifting issues. During the stop, an Indiana State Police K‑9 alerted to the vehicle, leading to a search that found the 309 pounds of cocaine in the sleeper berth. The men were then arrested and booked into the Putnam County Jail; ICE’s role came afterward via immigration detainers.