SIULAW Prof. Cindy Buys discusses the impact of the Illinois Way Forward Act on the Pulaski County Detention Center in Ullin, Illinois with local CBS affiliate, KFVS12

PULASKI COUNTY, Ill. (KFVS) - The Pulaski County Detention Center will no longer be allowed to hold immigration detainees.

The facility in Ullin is one of three in the state that have a contract with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The three facilities are located in McHenry, Kankakee and Pulaski Counties.

This week, Governor JB Pritzker signed a bill into law banning Illinois from holding illegal immigrants in the state.

That bill is called the Illinois Way Forward Act or Senate Bill 667.

“This is alarming, it’s concerning, it had bi-partisan opposition, you know, so in the state of Illinois, so we have too, everyone should be concerned,” said State Senator Dale Fowler of the 59th District

Fowler has one of the three facilities in his district, that’s the Pulaski County Detention Facility.

Fowler said this will have a big economic impact when the facility sends its ICE detainees to other parts of the U.S.

According to Buys, the Pulaski County facility opened in the early 2000s. It’s a 200-bed facility and most beds are occupied by immigration detainees.

Professor Buys said the majority of the detainees haven’t broken any other laws.

“It could be that there are folks who have come here on agricultural VISAs in southern Illinois to work on some of the fruit farms and that sort of thing and they’ve overstayed their VISA. Their’s might be a work raid, where they were picked up at their place of employment,” said Buys.

Even though Illinois is banning ICE detainees, it doesn’t change the national policy.

Read the rest of the story and watch the video here.