SAN DIEGO, CA – San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez has vowed to ignore the county policy restricting cooperation with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a controversial statement last week after the San Diego Board of Supervisors voted not to cooperate with ICE.
It was a move that prefigures an epic battle over California’s “sanctuary” law, stated The Guardian, noting the sanctuary policy seeks to protect citizens from federal immigration enforcement.
The new policy prohibits the sheriff’s department from collaborating with ICE on civil immigration enforcement. This brings San Diego in line with seven other California counties, including Los Angeles, that have adopted similar measures to limit federal immigration activities, wrote The Guardian.
According to Supervisor Nora Vargas, the policy reflects a commitment to protecting families and building community trust by prioritizing local resources for critical challenges rather than immigration enforcement.
Sheriff Martinez, however, announced she would not enforce the policy because state law already offers a reasonable mix of public safety and cooperation with immigration officials, reported The Guardian.
“Our state law is in the middle between curtailing local police cooperation with immigration enforcement, protecting public safety and fostering community trust,” said Martinez, an elected official, and she stressed her separation from the county board, The Guardian said.
The California law usually prohibits local law enforcement agencies from providing assistance to federal immigration officials (with the exception of individuals convicted of some violent offenses). With the new policy, ICE will have to obtain a judge’s directive before receiving help from the county, which further restricts federal action, The Guardian wrote.
California’s sanctuary laws were a battle cry against the Trump administration’s crackdown on deportations during Donald Trump’s first term. The 3.3 million-person county of San Diego, located near the U.S.-Mexico border, has also been the site of immigration issues, explained The Guardian.
Trump’s incoming administration will ramp up deportations and heavily rely on local authorities to support ICE. Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan has called sanctuary policies dangerous and said San Diego County is the front line, as reported by The Guardian.
Vargas, who supports the new policy, said the county transferred between 100 and 200 individuals a year to ICE under state law’s violent crime exception. These new regulations are meant to curb even more of these transfers and further protect immigrant communities.
“We will not use our local resources to do something that separates families, damages community confidence, or takes important local resources away from solving our greatest needs,” Vargas said in The Guardian.
Immigrants’ rights groups hail the board’s decision as an important step in protecting poor residents from federal intrusion, and most have called for widening state sanctuary laws to restrict ICE entry into state prisons and data sharing with federal authorities, The Guardian wrote.
California’s efforts to protect immigrant communities are part of a broader pushback against federal immigration policy that points to the ideological conflict between state and federal authority, noted The Guardian.
