It seems to be an “issue” that won’t go away.

No matter how many times officials have to state that Butler County is not a sanctuary county, they have to restate it again — and again.

“Like I’ve said before, we’re not a sanctuary county,” Beau Sneddon, deputy warden of operation at the Butler County Prison, said Tuesday.

And apparently no governmental agency, office or department — including the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — is contradicting Sneddon or any other county official.

“We fully cooperate with ICE,” county solicitor Mike English said on Thursday.

Perhaps the root of the issue — or nonissue, some might say — is the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

The center bills itself, according to its website, as a non-partisan research organization offering “reliable information about the social, economic, environmental, security, and fiscal consequences of legal and illegal immigration into the United States.

The left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center considers the Center for Immigration Studies an anti-immigration hate group.

Through no choice of its own, Butler County’s only connection to the center is the organization’s interactive map that lists Butler and 16 other counties in Pennsylvania as “sanctuary counties.”

The map apparently first appeared in July 2017 and, according to its website, was last updated May 30.

A click on the map of Butler County provides a pop-up, which contains a brief summary why the county appears on the center’s sanctuary list.

Purporting to cite county jail policy, it states the facility, “Will not hold individuals solely on an ICE detainer. Staff will not allow ICE officials to have access to inmates for investigative purposes without a court order or a “legitimate law enforcement purpose ... that is unrelated to the enforcement of civil immigration law.”

That’s half right and half wrong, says Sneddon.

He acknowledged that the jail cannot hold anyone solely on an ICE detainer — a written request issued to local police when a suspected illegal immigrant has been arrested on criminal charges and federal authorities believe there is probable cause to deport that individual.

“The ICE detainer is a nonmandatory, nonjudicial request by ICE,” Sneddon said, “We don’t accommodate requests. We take orders from a court.”

He said the jail requires a court order, a warrant, or virtually any piece of paper, so long as it’s signed by a judge.

“We require that from everybody,” Sneddon added, “not just ICE.”

The county’s Prison Board decision to not accept ICE detainers alone followed a 2014 ruling by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, said English.

The court found that Lehigh County violated the constitutional rights of Ernesto Galarza by holding him past a possible release date due to an ICE detainer.

Galarza, a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent, was mistakenly arrested in a November 2008 drug arrest by Allentown police. He posted bond the day after his arrest but was not released.

ICE requested his detention based on the false assertion he might have been an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic.

The American Civil Liberties Union subsequently sought damages for Galarza, and a panel of Third Circuit judges determined ICE detainers are requests, not mandates, so Galarza’s constitutional rights were violated.

Settlements were then reached. The federal government and Allentown paid Galarza a combined $50,000. Lehigh County paid him $95,000.

As to the Center for Immigration Studies’ claim that Butler County Prison will not allow ICE officials access to inmates, that’s false, says Sneddon.

“We allow ICE to use our fax and copy machines,” he said, “and to talk to prisoners.”

The jail also provides notification to ICE before the release of an inmate it has flagged.

The Center for Immigration Studies did not reply to email requests this week seeking comment.

English, meanwhile, noted that to the best of his knowledge, Butler County has never appeared on any ICE list of municipalities not in compliance with federal immigration law.

Therefore, he said, “The county has never faced any threat of losing federal money.”