When Grafton County Sheriff Jill Myers first won her seat in 2024, she laid out a largely uncontroversial vision for the responsibilities of the county’s sheriff department with the hopes of mending a disconnect between the public and the police force after she observed that policing had become “frowned upon.” In her ideal, deputies would take on more diverse day-to-day responsibilities: stopping to help someone on the side of the road, assisting local police in domestic calls. All the while, the department would also engage in more direct community outreach through local fundraisers and would send out more frequent public announcements so people could “actually see what their department is doing.” Doesn’t that all sound so nice?
There doesn’t seem to be much room for confusion in such a clear platform. Still, I, along with many other members of the public, must have missed exactly where in this vision of public goodwill, transparency and local cooperation aiding and abetting Immigration Customs and Enforcement fits in.
In March 2025, Myers reached out to ICE on her own initiative to sign a 287(g) agreement, which allows the agency to delegate authority to local law enforcement when interacting with undocumented migrants. She explained in an interview with The Dartmouth that her department would only help ICE transport individuals with active detainers, not “go out and do raids or any of that stuff.” Her eloquence in describing “that stuff” is one heck of a first step towards her vision for transparency. More seriously, though, her whitewashing of ICE’s detainment process suppresses the fact that the 287(g) memorandum contains no guarantee of due process for those detained, nor does it address the fact that the significant majority of people detained by ICE have no criminal convictions, or that several ICE arrests have devolved into physical assault. These aren’t distant incidents that the Upper Valley is far removed from: Just last month an ICE agent fatally shot a motorist in Maine.
Myers only just ended the partnership this past May, having made no arrests on ICE’s behalf, following a public petition and outspoken opposition from multiple county commissioners — whom, by the way, she did not consult before signing the agreement. And yet even in finally reversing her earlier mistake, Myers still did not address public outcry as having any influence on her decision, instead citing administrative burdens as the reason for why the partnership could not continue.
Now Myers is running unopposed in this year’s Democratic primary for county sheriff, and we have a proper accountability crisis on our hands. A county sheriff, like any other elected position, is to be periodically evaluated by the public against their initial campaign promises. Myers’ unilateral decision to cooperate with ICE is a clear violation of her promises — so much so that one of the women who worked on her campaign later led the petition to drop the 287(g) memorandum. Even more concerning is the fact that she never ended up taking accountability for the mistake when she undid it. Just imagine if the sheriff’s department were better equipped to handle those “administrative burdens.” Would our deputies still be working with ICE then? Would the arrests be underway by now?
Ideally, Myers would be facing at least another opponent in the Democratic primary — not so she would be doomed from the start to lose, because that choice ultimately belongs to the people of Grafton County, but so that she would be more motivated to take accountability. The fact that she isn’t facing any opposition risks emboldening the position of someone who has already broken the public’s trust.
In the meantime, there are still ways that the public and others in power can continue to exert their voice: write-ins during the Democratic primary, continued petitions for more accountability from the sheriff’s department and action from county commissioners to both use their power of the purse as leverage to keep the department in check and to use their voice to bring public attention to the department’s stray actions. And when 2028 arrives, the public will hopefully once again be able to exert their final will in the most direct way possible: by making their own choice on whether Sheriff Myers deserves her power any longer.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
