The federal government’s push on immigration enforcement has not had a major impact on the population of the Vigo County Jail.
Currently, five ICE holds are in the Vigo jail, but Vigo County Sheriff Derek Fell said all of them are being “held on local charges, as well,” Fell said. “So we don’t have any holds that are just for a ICE hold.”
Two current ICE holds have been charged with dealing cocaine, Fell said, while the others have been charged with peddling methamphetamines, child molestation and murder, all felonies.
The sheriff said that when someone is booked in on any charge, the officer who enacts their arrest enters their name into a database, which notifies the county when an individual is an ICE hold.
“We’ve always done our job — if we come across individuals, we notify federal authorities if they’re on an ICE hold,” Fell said. “It’s up to [ICE] if they want to come get them.
“In years past, typically they wouldn’t, so we’d deal with their local charges and any discipline they got here, then they would be released.”
Because the local ICE holds are incarcerated because of their local charges, they are not affecting the Vigo County Jail’s overcrowding, which has been a factor the county’s had to deal with since the opening of this relatively new jail, which opened in November 2022.
Next door in Clay County, a portion of the jail doubles as one of the major U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in the Midwest, and the ICE has already funneled more than 3,000 men and women through the jail, paying the county $85 for each day it holds an immigration detainee, according to the Indianapolis Star.
The Star reported the jail in Brazil was generating a profit for the county by holding inmates from other agencies long before the Trump administration’s aggressive push , having partnered with federal immigration for more than a decade.
State inmates
A bigger variable when it comes to the Vigo County Jail population are state inmates.
The Indiana Department of Correction transports state inmates to the Vigo County Jail at an unpredictable rate, Fell said. “Numbers fluctuate,” he said. “On any given day, we might have 10 or 15 DOC holds. We’ve had up to 50 or 60 at different times, but it varies.” He estimated the average number is between 20 and 30. For the jail’s use, IDOC currently owes Vigo county $335,456 for incarcerating convicted inmates from July 2024 through now, Fell said.
“That money doesn’t go to us (the sheriff’s department), it goes to the county’s general fund,” he added.
DOC spokesperson Annie Goeller told the Indiana Capital Chronicle that Indiana county disbursements would come in a single distribution this week. “They pay us per inmate per day and it’s a monthly fee,” Fell said. While the daily fee was once $37.50, he added, “Effective July 1, 2025, the rate changed to $42 per inmate per day.”
Monthly fees owed Vigo County by the DOC range from $12,000-$15,000, the sheriff said, with the highest coming in September 2024, when the county jail was owed $42,000.
The crowding issue
Construction of the new jail was hastened by a federal lawsuit, in which the county admitted overcrowding and conditions at the old jail just off the intersection of Third Street and Wabash Avenue amounted to a violation of prisoners constitutional rights.
But, as then-Sheriff John Plasse predicted, the new jail Honey Creek Drive was at capacity on the day it opened.
“Jail overcrowding is an issue and has been an issue for a number of years,” Fell conceded. “It’s frustrating that the jail was built to the size that it was, but it’s what we have to work with. … We can only have 80% capacity due to state and federal guidelines.”
Currently, the Vigo jail’s bed count stands at 495, but Fell noted, “According to the state jail inspectors, there are only 432 that meet jail standards. If there’s not a writing surface in the cell, then that doesn’t qualify as a bed for a long term.”
That leaves 432 beds that meet standards.
And keeping those beds at 80% capacity translates to about 345 or 346 people that can be housed in the Vigo facility on a daily basis, meaning that 50 Vigo inmates are currently in other counties.
So, just as DOC is paying Vigo County to house its inmates, the county must pay other counties when their inmates are incarcerated there. Typically, Fell said, Vigo County pays other counties $30,000 to $50,000 a month.
In 2024, Vigo County paid $690,000 to send inmates to other counties’ jails, Fell said.
Working on the problem
In an effort to thin the jail population, the sheriff’s office has implemented the RISE program — Reinvestment Initiative to Support and Educate — which is financed through a grant from the Vigo County Health Department — to lower recidivism.
In RISE, people who may have had substance issues in the past become mentors for inmates and help to reintroduce them to society — mentors help inmates get driver’s licenses, insurance, jobs and housing out of jail.
As RISE has only been practiced for a year, Fell said, “It’s hard to see a full impact — it’s probably going to take two or three or four years before you see what impact it has on recidivism.”
The sheriff is also re-implementing the Explorer program for kids around sixth-grade level, which he called “a junior police academy, a little more detailed and personalized.”
The Explorer program teaches students about law enforcement procedures and allows them to sit in a squad vehicle. The hope is that by introducing kids to the system in this fashion, they will not be entering the system by other means.
Multiple arms of the county — among them the sheriff’s office, the judiciary, the Board of Commissioners and the County Council — are working on the problem. The county is planning a new work release/diversion center, costs for which have been estimated between $15 million and $30 million.
Vigo County still submits regular reports to U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson, who accepted a settlement in the 2016 class-action lawsuit but who retained jurisdiction for the purpose of monitoring the Vigo County jail situation.
The sheriff said he knows the problem is a knotty one, and he has no illusions that jail crowding or high recidivism rates will go away soon.
“There are people who commit crimes who need to spend some time in jail,” he said. “There are people who need to go to prison. That’s an unfortunate part of the world we live in.
“However, there are people who make mistakes who can be rehabilitated,” he added. “If we hypothetically [reach out to] 150 inmates in six months, and we positively impact 12 — to me, that’s a win. That’s 12 people whose lives you’ve positively changed, and who hopefully you’ll never see in your jail again.”
Mark Fitton of the Tribune-Star also contributed to this report.