A County Snowplow Rolled Through Stinesville's Parade With an 'ICE Storm' Sign. Now Rokita Is Warning Monroe County to Back Off.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita. Photo: U.S. House of Representatives official portrait (2011), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Stinesville has 203 residents, a Stone Quarry Festival with a parade, and, as of this fall, a fight with Monroe County government that has reached the desk of Indiana's attorney general.

At the Sept. 26 Stone Quarry Festival parade, a Monroe County government snowplow rolled down the route carrying a sign that town board president Scott McGlocklin later read aloud as “ARE YOU READY FOR THE ICE STORM?” McGlocklin called it inappropriate and said he took it as county commissioners trying to bully his town. “I want to make it perfectly clear: The Monroe County Commissioners will not tell this town how it will run,” he said at the Oct. 6 town board meeting, stressing he spoke only for himself, The B Square Bulletin reported.

The same day, a six-page letter arrived from Attorney General Todd Rokita, and it took the town's side.

What Rokita told the commissioners

The dispute is over Stinesville's 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a Task Force Model deal that lets ICE train and supervise designated local officers to carry out certain federal immigration duties during regular police work. Monroe County commissioners passed Resolution 2026-36 on Sept. 17 saying the deal was signed without a town board vote at a public meeting, calling that “inconsistent with the democratic process,” and asking Stinesville to suspend it while the board deliberated.

Rokita's Oct. 6 opinion letter says the commissioners are wrong on both legal points they raised. Indiana police chiefs have operational control of their departments, he wrote, and no state law or local ordinance requires a town council to approve a 287(g) agreement first. Neither the Interlocal Cooperation Act nor state procurement law applies, in his reading, because the agreements are with a federal agency and commit no new public money.

Then came the warning. Rokita wrote that he understood the commissioners' objections had raised questions about whether the county might cut economic development money to Stinesville to pressure the town. Any attempt by the county “or any other governmental entity” to discourage the deal, “such as by withholding funding,” would “almost certainly violate” the state law barring local limits on immigration enforcement, he wrote, and his office could seek civil penalties of up to $10,000 “for each and every violation.”

He closed by urging every police agency in the state to sign up. More than 45 state and local agencies in Indiana already have such agreements, the letter says, including Rokita's own office.

The other side of the argument

The county resolution did not threaten Stinesville's funding or tie any money to the ICE agreement, The B Square noted. Bloomington immigration attorney Christie Popp, who has questioned the agreement's legality, made the same point and called the letter “in many ways self-serving.”

Popp also flagged a detail that matters. Rokita's letter repeatedly says Stinesville's chief of police signed the agreement. According to ICE records and the county resolution, the person who signed for the town on Feb. 10 was Shane Pittman, then the deputy chief, The Bloomingtonian reported. Pittman, now the chief, has said he signed at the previous chief's direction and was told the board supported it. Board members have said they never authorized it. “So even under Rokita's own interpretation, the agreement is invalid,” Popp argued. She also said the Interlocal Cooperation Act's own wording lists federal agencies among the entities it covers.

Her bottom line isn't that ICE partnerships are illegal. It's that a public body should vote on them in public. “Requiring a state or local political subdivision to follow the statute and the democratic process when signing an agreement with ICE does not restrict cooperation with ICE,” she said.

Readers should keep one thing straight: an attorney general's opinion is not a court ruling. It tells local officials how the state's chief lawyer reads the law and how he intends to enforce it. Town attorney Darla Brown said Rokita's letter came too late for her to check his citations before the meeting.

Where the $122,500 sits

For a department whose officers, Pittman has said, often bought their own gear, the money is not abstract. McGlocklin said the town has already received $122,500 in federal funds tied to the program, none of it spent. On Oct. 6, with two of three members present, the board passed Ordinance 2026-11 creating a Homeland Security Law Enforcement Support Fund to hold it, while insisting that doing so didn't settle whether the deal continues. Pittman has also said the department applied for a federal grant that could pay for two full-time officers and an administrative job for three years; it hasn't been awarded.

The board, which held a public work session on the program Sept. 22, had two resolutions ready Tuesday, one to ratify and one to terminate. It used neither and pushed the decision to November. McGlocklin said he disapproves of some of ICE's activities but sees the money as a real resource. “I personally am not comfortable with going either way tonight,” he said.

Bigger than one town

Stinesville isn't the only place where the paperwork is thin. A B Square review of ICE data downloaded Sept. 5 counted 45 agreements involving 42 Indiana state and local agencies, 36 of them on the same broad Task Force Model. Some towns, including Waterloo and Andrews, voted publicly to join. Others signed without a similarly clear record of approval from their elected boards.

That's where both sides of this fight have a point conservatives should recognize. Rokita is right that a county government in Bloomington has no business strong-arming a 203-person town over a lawful partnership with federal immigration agents, and state law says so. But a federal deal that brings six figures into a town's books, signed by a deputy chief on the word of a departed chief, is exactly the kind of thing an elected board ought to put its name to in daylight. The Stinesville board can settle the local half of this in November with a recorded vote. Until then, the agreement stays in force and the $122,500 stays in the fund.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.