Agency record
St. Clair County Sheriff's Department (IL)
IL · County Sheriff
St. Clair County jail booking records sit inside the LexisNexis Accurint Virtual Crime Center, and ICE has used them to build a deportation case.
A sworn affidavit in United States v. Jimenez-Santiago (Southern District of Illinois, Case No. 3:25-cr-30036-NJR) describes an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officer learning of a September 16, 2024 arrest by the Belleville Police Department after searching St. Clair County jail bookings on LexisNexis. The affidavit states plainly that those bookings are part of the Accurint Virtual Crime Center database used by ERO officers. The officer then matched the county booking photos against federal photos taken before the man's 2019 removal to Mexico.
Illinois is a TRUST Act state. The law, strengthened by the 2021 Illinois Way Forward Act, bars local law enforcement from sharing custody information with federal immigration authorities without a federal criminal warrant. The affidavit describes no warrant. It did not need one, because the query went to a private database rather than to the jail.
What remains unconfirmed is how the county's data reaches LexisNexis. St. Clair County runs its jail roster on eJail (goejail.com), and no contract, invoice, or AVCC XML Addendum for this agency has been located. The booking data could arrive through a direct agency feed or through a third-party aggregator that LexisNexis resells. That distinction is the open question, and it is what public records requests should target.
Contract signals
- Database Interface (Schedule A)
- ○ not in record
- AVCC XML Addendum present
- ○ not in record
- Irrevocable license clause
- ○ not in record
- Jail Booking Search & Report
- ● confirmed
- Community Crime Map
- ○ not in record
- BuyCrash (crash data feed)
- ○ not in record
Technical
- RMS vendor
- Unconfirmed
- CAD vendor
- —
- Data fields shared (known)
- Jail bookings (confirmed present in AVCC per sworn ICE affidavit), including booking photographs used for identity matching. Full field list unconfirmed. Whether the feed carries victim/witness or RMS narrative fields is unknown and is a standing FOIA question.
Sanctuary status
- Sanctuary jurisdiction
- Yes
- Controlling policy
- Illinois TRUST Act (5 ILCS 805), as amended by the Illinois Way Forward Act (2021)
- Bypass confirmed
- Yes
Source
- Document type
- —
- Discovery method
- Other
- Source document
- View document →
Source documents (1)
Federal criminal complaint and supporting ICE affidavit charging Andres Jimenez-Santiago with illegal reentry (8 USC 1326) in the Southern District of Illinois. Document 1, page 2 of 3. The affidavit is a rare first-person description of the LexisNexis-to-ICE pathway written by the officer who used it. The ERO deportation officer states that on September 17, 2024 he learned of the subject's presence by searching St. Clair County, Illinois jail bookings on LexisNexis, and identifies those bookings as part of the Accurint Virtual Crime Center database used by ERO officers. The subject had been arrested by the Belleville, Illinois police department on September 16, 2024 for DUI and aggravated battery to a police officer. The officer then matched the county booking photos to federal booking photos taken before the subject's April 1, 2019 removal to Mexico at Laredo, Texas. Significance for the project: this is a sworn federal statement that a specific Illinois county's jail bookings are inside AVCC and are queried by ICE ERO, in a state whose TRUST Act bars local agencies from sharing custody information with federal immigration authorities absent a criminal warrant. No warrant is described. It documents the sanctuary bypass mechanism from the federal side rather than from a contract or FOIA return. What the document does NOT establish: how St. Clair County booking data reaches LexisNexis. It is silent on whether the county contributes directly under an AVCC XML Addendum, whether the data arrives via Appriss Insights / Justice Intelligence aggregation, or whether it is harvested from the public roster.
Have something we don’t?
If you have a contract, FOIA return, or council packet for this agency, send it via the tip line.
Last researched August 19, 2026