Hamilton County’s immigration enforcement agreement with the federal government is not yet in place, but it will be soon.
Sheriff Austin Garrett confirmed in an interview that the agreement, which he signed in March 2025, isn’t quite up and running — as Chattanooga Police Chief John Chambers stated during a City Council meeting earlier in the week.
That means deputies at the Hamilton County Jail don’t have access to Immigration and Customs Enforcement databases yet, and notifications to the federal government about an inmate’s immigration status are done under state law, not through the agreement.
The agreement under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act will allow deputies at the county jail to interrogate, detain and transport people whose immigration status is under question. Generally, the agreement delegates specific federal immigration officer duties to local law enforcement.
Garrett said multiple county deputies have already been through training, though he declined to specify how many. The last step is getting federal computers and their software up and running at the jail, he said. That process started around December, though officials ran into some bugs, he said.