Iowa Democrat Senate candidate Josh Turek cast two sheriffs as proof of law-enforcement backing on immigration, even as both have long records of limiting cooperation with ICE.
Breitbart reported that Turek’s campaign released a new ad starring Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner and Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald, both Democrats, to sell the idea that local law enforcement trusts him on the border.
In the spot, Fitzgerald delivers the endorsement line the campaign wants voters to remember.
"As a law enforcement officer, I know Josh Turek has our back, and yours,"
The problem for Turek is the paper trail those same sheriffs left on immigration enforcement, and the votes and debate lines that undercut his own hardened message.
Immigration has become a defining fight in the Iowa Senate race against Republican nominee Ashley Hinson, and Turek is trying to look tough while carrying a record that points the other way. That same pressure is showing up for Democrats elsewhere, including battleground candidates who have kept national party help at arm’s length.
Paul Fitzgerald did not merely sit out federal partnership. In 2014 he ordered Story County to stop honoring ICE detainers, the requests federal immigration officers use to hold someone in local custody so agents can pick them up.
He defended that policy to the Ames Tribune in plain terms.
"We cannot deprive somebody of their freedom without a criminal charge or a warrant for their arrest, and a detainer is neither of those,"
That stance treats an ICE detainer as optional paperwork rather than a tool to keep removable illegal immigrants from walking out of jail.
Fitzgerald went further in January 2021. He signed a letter backing Alejandro Mayorkas for secretary of Homeland Security. The letter called Mayorkas a “proven leader” who “has worked to keep the nation secure.”
Mayorkas later oversaw years of border breakdown. The U.S. House impeached him in 2024. Millions of illegal immigrants entered during that stretch. Fitzgerald’s signature put him on the side of the official who ran the department while it happened.
Brian Gardner’s record tracks the same pattern. He refused to join the 287(g) program, the federal arrangement that trains and authorizes local officers to help ICE identify and process illegal immigrants.
In 2014 he told The Gazette the county’s new approach in blunt language.
"We will no longer hold any inmates past their release time merely on an ICE hold,"
The change was quietly implemented. Local custody would end on the county’s schedule even when federal immigration officers asked for more time.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform still listed Linn County as a “sanctuary jurisdiction” in its 2025 report. Gardner’s county stayed on that map long after the policy shift.
So the sheriffs smiling in Turek’s ad are the same officials who limited ICE holds, skipped 287(g), and, in Fitzgerald’s case, praised the Biden-era DHS chief later impeached by the House. Voters watching the commercial do not hear that history.
Turek is not a bystander to the contradiction. While serving in the Iowa state Senate he voted for taxpayer funding that provided welfare for illegal immigrants, according to the legislative journal his critics cite.
When he launched his U.S. Senate bid he claimed he opposed benefits for illegal immigrants. In a recent debate he advocated “pathways to citizenship.” The campaign ad now asks Iowans to believe the sheriffs prove he stands with law enforcement on enforcement itself.
Those mixed signals fit a wider Democratic pattern of candidates scrambling to revise their brand after years of open-border politics. Some have even tied their fortunes to national figures who remain radioactive with swing voters, while others run from the association.
Hinson, by contrast, announced her endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents the agents who work the line. The contrast notes itself: one candidate collects backing from the people who enforce immigration law; the other films sheriffs who spent years narrowing that cooperation.
Control of the Senate is still in play, and immigration remains one of the clearest sorting issues for voters who want the border closed and the law enforced. Nine races now shape the battle for that majority, and Iowa is part of the map both parties are watching.
Turek’s ad tries to borrow the authority of the badge. The sheriffs’ own words and decisions from 2014 forward show what that badge actually did when ICE asked for help: release on schedule, no 287(g), detainers treated as insufficient, and political cover for the DHS secretary who presided over the surge.
Democratic voters have already shown they will punish failure inside their own party, ousting aging incumbents at a pace that has rattled the old guard. A glossy law-enforcement commercial does not erase a vote for benefits, a debate line for citizenship pathways, or sheriffs who spent a decade limiting federal immigration holds.
Iowans can watch the ad. They can also read the 2014 quotes, the Mayorkas letter, the FAIR listing, and the state Senate vote. The footage sells trust. The record shows something else.
Border security is not a casting call. It is a choice about detainers, partnerships, and who gets released, and Turek just put his preferred sheriffs on camera.