(IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH) – Polk County is facing more lawsuits brought by individuals detained in the county jail by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Polk, Woodbury, Muscatine and other Iowa counties have been sued by numerous jail inmates in recent months, each alleging they’ve been unlawfully detained in county jails by ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

An exact count of all the lawsuits against Iowa jails is difficult to calculate given the fact that Iowa’s county jails typically don’t disclose the names of inmates who are being held at the direction of ICE. In addition, public access to the federal court records related to those detentions is tightly restricted. However, the available records show Polk County, ICE and DHS are named as defendants in at least three additional cases recently filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.

Lt. Mark Chance of the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said Friday that 68 of the 993 inmates now housed at the Polk County Jail are detainees of DHS or ICE. Nationally and in Iowa, many of the lawsuits surrounding ICE detainees involve the Trump administration’s six-month-old effort to expand its “mandatory detention” policy. Under that policy, ICE is holding people in jail indefinitely as their immigration cases proceed, while arguing those individuals are not entitled to a hearing where they can argue for their release on bond.

Politico recently reported that more than 300 federal judges, including appointees of every president since Ronald Reagan, have rejected the administration’s “mandatory detention” theory in more than 1,600 cases. The courts’ near-universal rejection of the administration’s position has not prevented the U.S. Department of Justice from continuing to use that rationale to jail people indefinitely. In fact, the DOJ recently appealed one judge’s ruling against ICE after it resulted in a woman’s release from the Muscatine County Jail.