MARIETTA — The closed-door meeting county chairman Tim Lee and commissioner Helen Goreham were scheduled to have with a federal immigration official on Wednesday never took place.

Lee said the county’s legal department received a call from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement asking that the meeting be canceled an hour before it was set to begin.

The agent did not give a reason for the cancellation, Lee said.

“They just said they weren’t going to be there,” he said.

Lee said he asked that the meeting be rescheduled, and at the very least that the agent attend the next commission meeting, but as of Wednesday evening he had not heard back from the agent.

On Tuesday, commissioner Bob Ott called for Lee to hold the meeting in public so that everyone could be educated on what the ICE agent had to say. Lee said the reason for the meeting was so he and Goreham could learn more about the proposal Ott and Commissioner JoAnn Birrell have made to require county contractors to apply for certification with the federal IMAGE program.

Lee said Ott can say what he likes.

“How many meetings has he had where it wasn’t open to talk to people about this?” Lee said. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If he opens up all his meetings, I’ll open up all of mine.”

Lee said he wanted the meeting to be closed so those in attendance could ask whatever questions they wanted.

“Sometimes if you want to get to the truth, you’ve got to have a conversation where people can be a little more relaxed and unguarded about what they’re saying because it won’t be printed in the paper the next day,” he said.