As elected officials in Minnesota have desperately sought to persuade the Trump administration to end an immigration crackdown, Dawanna Witt, the sheriff of Hennepin County, finds herself in a pivotal spot.

The jail she runs in Minneapolis is the largest in the state and the only one that refuses, as a matter of policy, to assist in any way with federal immigration enforcement.

The approach is broadly supported by her constituents, Sheriff Witt said in an interview. But the sheriff said she had been agonizing over whether allowing some measure of cooperation with the federal authorities in their push for deportations might serve a broader good.

“I don’t think that Donald Trump or Tom Homan are going to leave without feeling like they have some sort of win,” Sheriff Witt said, referring to the White House border czar, who has been newly assigned to oversee the crackdown in Minnesota. “I don’t ever want to be put in a position that I had the power to make them leave and another one of our citizens gets killed.”

Speaking in her office in downtown Minneapolis this week, Sheriff Witt looked weary.

The showdown over immigration enforcement between the Trump administration and elected Democrats in Minnesota has left Sheriff Witt under tremendous pressure from all sides.

Sheriff Witt is a defendant in a lawsuit the Department of Justice filed in September, which argues that policies that restrict sharing of information with immigration officials amount to unlawful obstruction of federal law enforcement functions. The Justice Department argued that her jail’s policy “unlawfully discriminates against the federal government” and violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.