500 inmates taken by ICE under Fresno County Sheriff’s partnership

Five hundred inmates have been deported or otherwise taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office partnered with federal immigration officers in 2015.

The numbers were released by the Sheriff's Office this week regarding the short-lived program, which drew criticism and protests over the two years it was in place.

A state law now prohibits jails from working so closely with ICE, but the sheriff’s office says the controversial program, which allowed ICE agents to work from inside Fresno County Jail and determine the legal status of inmates before deciding whether they should be deported, had its benefits.

"Every other local, state and federal policing agency has this access, so why shouldn’t ICE, which is just another policing agency...This system has worked very well," Tony Botti, spokesman for Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims, said in an email. "However, with the passage of SB 54, ICE is no longer allowed to contact people booked for 'certain' crimes. This is why ICE agents are forced to go into the community to contact them instead of in the safe confines of our jail."

Botti said that the inmates taken by ICE represent less than one percent of the jail's 82,000 bookings since 2015.

"Of those, some were deported, but others, because of the type of case, were given due process in the immigration court," he said. "So you can see it is a very precise process of where ICE is zeroing in on only those they are truly interested in."

Critics, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, said the Fresno program hurt community trust in law enforcement, and discouraged immigrants and their families from reporting crimes or feeling safe.

Senate Bill 54, known as the sanctuary state law, was passed last year and prohibits local law enforcement from holding undocumented inmates based on their immigration status and sharing their personal information. The law also limits how and when state and local law enforcement can contract with federal immigration authorities.

Botti said that Mims, who criticized the state law on national TV earlier this month, believes that "local deputies have a specific job to do and federal agents have another specific job to do."

While President Donald Trump has cracked down on a slew of immigration laws, Botti said that has not trickled down to local law enforcement. A federal directive for ICE to focus more on businesses, in search of undocumented workers, has been evident in the Fresno area in recent months, with local farms and agricultural companies being hit by audits.

"There continues to be a narrative that the White House is demanding local law enforcement take up the responsibilities of federal immigration agents. This is not true from our standpoint," he said. "We have never been asked or told to use our deputies for immigration enforcement."

The Madera County Board of Supervisors will vote next week on a similar issue, after the ACLU sued the county, alleging it had broken private meeting laws in order to direct law enforcement officials to work with ICE.

Madera County reached a settlement with the ACLU, and the Department of Corrections said it does not, and will not, cooperate with ICE.

Mackenzie Mays: 559-441-6412, @MackenzieMays

This story was originally published March 23, 2018 at 5:00 PM with the headline "500 inmates taken by ICE under Fresno County Sheriff’s partnership."