Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Department

One of the organizations that organize and sponsor these trainings is the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). JINSA is a think tank that advocates for US-Israeli security cooperation, increased domestic military spending, and military aid to Israel, and has board members with close ties to US defense contractors. JINSA launched its Law Enforcement Exchange Program (LEEP) shortly after 9/11, and since 2002 has run annual trips to Israel for US federal, state, and local law enforcement. Over 11,000 additional American law enforcement officials have attended LEEP conferences nationwide, which bring in Israeli security officials as experts.

The Sheriff’s Department of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, is among the departments that have sent delegates to Israel. Jim Pendergraph served as Sheriff of Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Department between 1994 and 2008. Sheriff Pendergraph attended a training in Israel with JINSA as a delegate of the LEEP program in 2004. Sheriff Pendergraph is currently a ŽSenior Law Enforcement Consultant at TASER International, now called Axon, which sells Tasers and other equipment to law enforcement. In May 2006, he became one of the nation’s first sheriffs to join a pilot of the 287(g) program that allowed him to place county inmates into deportation proceedings.

Under his leadership, the Mecklenberg County Sheriff’s Department became a national model for how local and federal law enforcement officials can work together to target undocumented immigrants for deportation, allowing local deputies access to a federal database to identify undocumented immigrants. In 2007, he was hired by ICE as the first Executive Director of State and Local Coordination, where he expanded this model to other communities in the South and other states nationwide. According to the Institute for Southern Studies, there are 78 local law enforcement agencies in 20 states participating in the program, which led to the deportation of almost 6,000 people in 2017 alone. He resigned his position amid criticism of comments he made suggesting ICE focus more of its efforts on cracking down on undocumented immigrant laborers in the workplace.

Jim Pendergraph currently serves on the advisory board of Major County Sheriffs Association, which represents counties or parishes that include over 100 million Americans. He ran for Congress in 2012.