Clark Kauffman is deputy editor at Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is continuing to pursue a lawsuit against Winneshiek County and its sheriff, Dan Marx, for allegedly violating Iowa law by discouraging law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials.

In her latest court filings, Bird has criticized Marx, alleging the sheriff has, in essence, asserted that “federal immigration officials should not be trusted.”

Bird has also signaled that even if Marx were to comply with her demand that he disavow his past statements, the state is still obligated to strip Winneshiek County of funding, at least temporarily, based on those previous statements.

The lawsuit, filed in March in Polk County District Court, claims that Iowa law “requires stripping Winneshiek County of state funding until the sheriff follows the procedure to reinstate the funds” by disavowing his previous public statements on immigration enforcement.

The lawsuit stems from a February 4, 2025, Facebook post in which, Marx, a Republican, stated that if his office received “detainer” requests to hold immigrants suspected of lacking legal status, and those requests were not vetted and approved by the courts, they would be rejected by his office.

In his post, Marx distinguished between detainer requests of that kind and what he called “valid” judicial warrants and court orders. He wrote that “the only reason detainers are issued is because the federal agency does not have enough information or has not taken the time to obtain a valid judicial warrant.”

In recent court filings, Bird claims that assertion by Marx is false, but that even if it were true, that’s not a defense since Iowa Code Chapter 27A clearly prohibits Iowa law enforcement officers from discouraging cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

“The court need not go down this rabbit hole,” Bird said, referring to the accuracy of Marx’s statements, adding that Chapter 27A “does not turn on whether the discouragement to cooperate with federal law is true or false… Whether Marx’s post was ‘an opinion’ or a statement of fact is irrelevant to whether he intentionally discouraged enforcement of immigration law.”

Bird: State funds for Winneshiek County must be denied

Before filing the lawsuit, Bird provided Marx with specific language to include in a public statement disavowing his Facebook post, written in the first-person to appear over Marx’s signature. Although Marx’s office deleted the Facebook post, Marx did not publish the statement authored by Bird, who then sued, seeking a court order declaring Winneshiek County to be ineligible to receive any state funds.

Bird is now contesting Marx’s request that the court dismiss the case.

“Marx’s removal of his Facebook post after the attorney general initiated this enforcement action does not moot the case,” Bird argues in a court filing.

Marx has not issued a public retraction of the statement, so his violation is ongoing. […]

While the post was the start of that discouragement, the message of the post highlighting the inaccurate characterizations of Marx’s policy and the inaccurate characterizations of the illegality of ICE detainers were what were found to be discouraging. That is why just “[d]eleting the offending Facebook post” was not alone enough to bring Marx back into compliance. Without more explanation of what was wrong with the post, the untrue allegations remain unrebutted and the discouragement caused by the initial post remains ongoing.

Bird also argues that even if Marx were to fully comply now with her request to disavow his previous statements, Iowa law still requires the state to temporarily strip Winneshiek County of state funding.

The law, Bird has argued to the court, “requires a state-funds denial whenever Chapter 27A is violated — no matter whether the violation persists throughout the litigation [….] To find otherwise would allow local entities to avoid liability for violating the law by ceasing to violate the law as soon as an enforcement action begins.”

In her court filings, Bird also notes that “the Legislature clearly intended a local entity to face some punishment for a violation because it does not allow a petition for reinstatement (of funds) until ‘no earlier than ninety days after the date of a final judicial determination.’”

In response to the lawsuit, Marx and Winneshiek County have each asked to be removed from the case, prompting the attorney general to characterize the county’s request as “odd” given the amount of money that’s at stake.

“Though millions of dollars of its state funding is on the line, Winneshiek County makes the odd request to be removed from the case,” the state observed in a June 6 court filing. “Given the financial consequences, the state assumed that the county would want to have a say in this litigation.”

As for Marx’s request that he be dismissed as a party to the case, the Attorney General’s office has told the court, “the State does not hold strong views on the issue of which defendant best represents the County’s interest in the statutory remedy following this Court’s finding of a violation. If Marx wants to put Winneshiek County’s state funding at risk and then not defend his actions in court, so be it.”

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Editor’s note from Laura Belin: During a June 13 status conference, the parties and Polk County District Court Judge Scott Beattie agreed to schedule a two-hour hearing on the various motions before the court for Friday, July 18 at 9:00 am.

Top photo of Brenna Bird is cropped from an image first published on the Facebook page of the Iowa Attorney General’s office on May 28, 2025.