Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has filed a lawsuit to defund one county in her state after its sheriff vowed not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers.

In a February 4 post on Facebook, Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx said that he would not cooperate with the detainers because he believes they are not constitutional, Fox News reported.

In the post, which has since been deleted, he asked citizens to contact his office if they encounter “any federal agents” and he and those in his office are “always willing to assist with verifying credentials and the legitimacy of any paperwork federal agents should have to make certain your rights are not being abused.”

“If the fed’s actions and paperwork are within constitutional parameters (such as proper and valid judicial warrants/court orders) we will assist if needed or requested to ensure their actions are carried out professionally and in the least intrusive fashion possible,” the sheriff said.

“If their actions or paperwork are not within constitutional parameters,” he said, “then we will make every effort to block, interfere and interrupt their actions from moving forward.”

He said that the ICE detainers are “non-judicially vetted ‘detainers,’” and said they “are simply an unconstitutional *request* from ICE or other three letter federal agency to arrest or hold someone.”

He insisted 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.”

“Simply put, they are not sure they are detaining the right person and need more time to figure it out,” he said, “these detainers are violations of our 4th Amendment protection against warrantless search, seizure and arrest, and our 6th Amendment right to due process.”

He said that it was his “long-time stance on not recognizing detainers” and that any involvement with federal officials would be based on “constitutional standards … not opinions, politics or emotions.”

In her lawsuit the attorney general is looking to defund the entire county until the sheriff agrees to comply with federal immigration authorities.

She said that the sheriff’s Facebook post was “rife with legal and factual errors that discouraged enforcing immigration laws,” and that it violated chapter 27A of the state’s legal code which says that a county “shall be ineligible to receive any state funds if the local entity intentionally violates this chapter.”

“Sheriff Marx was given the chance to retract his statement, follow the law, and honor ICE detainers, but he refused—even at a cost to his home county,” she said to Fox News.

“He left us with no choice but to take the case to court to enforce our laws and ensure cooperation with federal immigration authorities,” she said.