Yellowstone County residents wait their turn to give public comment at the county commissioners meeting, Jan. 27, 2025 in the commission chambers in Billings (Photo by Jenna Martin for the Daily Montanan).
On Jan. 27, 1945, soldiers from the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front liberated approximately 7,000 prisoners from the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, a fact Yellowstone resident Zack Hartman found himself reminding the Yellowstone County Commissioners of, 80 years later to the day.
“Will you still be around in 30 years when we have to deal with what you’re proposing? You are unilaterally proposing without consulting us. This is absurd,” said Hartman. “The liberation of Auschwitz happened today in 1945, do you think the people of Auschwitz, the people that lived in the surrounding areas still want to call that home? Disgusting.”
Monday’s commissioner meeting was open to the public, with the opportunity to comment on county business at the end, all of which focused entirely on the recent letter from commission Chairman Mark Morse to the Montana Congressional delegation, all of whom are Republican, offering the use of the First Interstate Bank MetraPark Arena and surrounding campus in the detention of “criminal illegal immigrants within Yellowstone County or this region.”
“I want to tell you how disappointed I am by that letter offering our facilities as a place to detain immigrants,” said Billings resident Bob Struckman, who was first to the microphone. “It was shameful to me that you stumbled over yourselves, to insert yourselves in this ugly national debate and bring the ugliest aspects of that debate right here to Yellowstone County.”
After a resounding applause, which Morse admonished, Struckman continued his statement, “They’re going to be jailed for the simple reason of trying to come to this country and build a better life.”
Henry Parkins was next.
“This is tyranny. This is Billings Montana. We cannot stand by, essentially a concentration camp being made by the Metra,” he said.
Comments continued for more than an hour. Only one resident testified in support, former Republican congressional candidate Stacy Zinn; all others were opposed.
“I was a former head of Drug Enforcement Administration for 23 years, spent over 10 years here, in Yellowstone County, also overseeing all of DEA Montana. The last act as the head of the DEA was to take down the No.2 Cartel here, which were illegals,” Zinn said. “There’s a pipeline from Denver to Billings, we have individuals in Salt Lake City, pipeline from Salt Lake City to Yellowstone County. We have a lot of poisons coming into our street, fentanyl, meth, illegal mairjuana trade, cocaine, and a lot of that has be distributed by gangs and also by illegals that come across our southwest border.
“We have sex trafficking going on here in Yellowstone County, we have Labor trafficking taking place right here. I can see it, I can spot it, I can name the places. But respectfully, we need to take care of our individuals here. Do what you gotta do to protect citizens here of Yellowstone County.”
Taxpayer burden
Before the meeting began, newly elected Commissioner Mike Waters offered to clear some “misconceptions,” stating multiple times that the letter was “merely a possibility of a proposal.”
“I see no use of Yellowstone County taxes in this possibility, I’m sure the federal government would fully take any proposal that they brought to us for any use of the facilities, so this is not going to be a burden to the Yellowstone County taxpayers,” said Waters, adding that no sheriff or jail personnel would be offered, as the jail is already overcrowded.
With its 434 bed capacity regularly exceeding 600 inmates — the jail is indeed overcrowded, a problem that has persisted for more than a decade. The county has not been able to manage a solution for this problem, and with no levy option put forth for the public to build a new jail, the county eventually turned to the City of Billings for help in paying for a temporary holding, pre-arraignment facility for people waiting to be seen by a judge. The city agreed to pay $2.7 million during the course of three years in exchange for 10 reserved beds designated exclusively for municipal use.
State law prohibits cities from running detention facilities or handling their maintenance or operations.
A misunderstanding of crime
Waters also referenced the newly passed Laken Riley Act.
“The Laken Riley Act is requiring illegal aliens who are listed for violent crimes to be held,” Waters said. “This again is merely a possibility of the proposal. The President of the United States declared a state of emergency at the southern border that designated the cartels as terrorist organizations. This letter was a possibility to try to help in a fight.”
The third member of the trio of commissioners, all Republican, offered support of the proposal after the meeting.
“What we’re looking for maybe is helping the government if they need to process people who are criminal elements. We’re not talking about working on undocumented people, we’re talking about the gangs, the drug members, the rapists, the murderers, the cartel members, they need to go out, they don’t belong here. They’re a criminal element and we want to help our president remove them,” said Commissioner John Ostlund.
However, the Laken Riley Act does not require an undocumented immigrant to commit a violent crime to be detained; in fact, they don’t have to commit a crime at all. The law gives the Department of Homeland Security the ability to detain an individual if that individual does not have proper documentation to prove their citizenship and, “has been charged with, arrested for, convicted of, or admits to having committed acts that constitute the essential elements of burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.”
Under the Laken Riley Act, immigrants only need to be arrested or charged with a crime – not convicted or found guilty – in order to be detained by DHS.
Undocumented immigrants are also the population least likely to commit violent crime, as well as any crime overall, when compared to U.S. born citizens. In addition, as immigrant populations increase, crime rates decrease. As stated by the American Immigration Council, “In 1980, immigrants made up 6.2% of the U.S. population, and the total crime rate was 5,900 crimes per 100,000 people. By 2022, the share of immigrants had more than doubled, to 13.9%, while the total crime rate had dropped by 60.4%.”
A 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found immigrants were 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S. born citizens, and a 2021 study by the Justice Department found that almost 90% of violations immigrants were arrested for were violations of immigration laws, not violent crime.
“We don’t have an illegal immigrant problem, we have a white nationalist problem in Billings,” said resident Will Ryerson.
“The highest rates of crime are by white men in our community and you’re not talking about housing them at the Metra,” said resident Pari Kemmick.
Additional consequences
Other commenters focused on the fiscal consequences and questioned why the Metra was not offered as a solution for larger existing problems.
“If the Metra was a good idea for helping people, why has this offer not come up as an offer for sheltering houseless people in our community while mental health services are being cut and funding is being cut in an affordable housing crisis, it’s just getting worse and worse,” continued Kemmick. “How do you plan to explain this to major musical acts and craft shows that are coming through that they’ll be sharing this space with an internment camp?”
“I look to a sponsor like First Interstate Bank,” said Billings resident Luke Ashmore, referring to the naming rights the large regional bank paid to the county. “If they don’t speak out against this, I’m going to stop banking with them, I know others in the room will do the same thing.”
First Interstate Bank did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Ashmore also expressed his doubts of Metra events carrying on as usual.
“I look at Hozier. He’s the biggest artist we’ve secured in Billings in the last 10 years. He’s outspoken for human rights, do you think he wants to play a concert at the Metra with this going on? And then also think about how many state sporting events we have,” Ashmore said. “Every year there’s multiple MHSA state championships, you think families and fans and athletes will want to try to make happy memories at a stadium like this while next door there are people detained?”
Others said events that didn’t involve an A-list entertainer filled their thoughts.
“My oldest son is now 17 and he is graduating high school this year and graduation happens at the Metra and it makes me very uncomfortable to think that my son’s big day is going to be at the Metra along with possibly a detention center with other people just like him, just like his dad, just like his grandma,” said resident Avalon Russell. “I hope you guys don’t let this happen and my son can graduate at the Metra and let that be a celebration.”
Community members didn’t just attend the normally quiet Monday morning discussion, but they also took to other forms of resistance to what has so-far been a proposal by the state’s largest county. Another petition has already collected over 2,000 signatures.
“These are our resources, this is our county,” said Struckman. “I’m very proud of Billings, I’m very proud of Yellowstone County. Please don’t mar this county by making a jail in our midst for people who have done no crime.”