More than 1,000 Valley immigrants transferred to ICE, despite state laws. How it happened
Sheriffs in the central San Joaquin Valley have facilitated the transfer of more than 1,000 immigrants to federal agents since state laws prohibiting local law enforcement cooperation with immigration officials went into effect in California, according to new records obtained by the ACLU of Northern California for a report released Wednesday.
The extensive report reveals the number of transfers to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is nearly three times higher than the official count local sheriff’s offices have reported to the California Attorney General’s Office since 2018.
A 2018 Fresno Bee story revealed the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office’s policy allowed federal immigration officers to enter the vestibule — a secured room at the county jail — to make arrests. In 2020, the Fresno Bee further revealed the Fresno Sheriff’s Office reported to the Attorney General’s Office it had made a total of four transfers to immigration agents in 2018, but according to data the newspaper obtained from ICE, the federal agency had arrested 102 individuals at the county jail the same year.
The ACLU’s report examines these, and other issues, on a much larger scale across the San Joaquin Valley, which is home to a large immigrant population. The report also looked at the issue of immigration arrests in local courthouses.
The civil rights organization uncovered that, at least, a total of 1,001 immigrants were arrested in local jails throughout the San Joaquin Valley from 2018 to 2020, and that number may be an undercount. Meanwhile, the total number of ICE transfers reported by sheriffs in the region to the Attorney General’s Office was only 357 for the same time period, the report found.
Maria Romani, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California and author of the report, said the report confirms what many in the community had suspected for a long time. All the practices in the report, she said, “harm our immigrant community.”
“Some of these sheriffs are circumventing the law, or finding loopholes, or finding ways in which they can continue working with ICE in a very close way,” she told The Bee during an interview. “Sometimes it’s a violation of the law, and other times, it’s... an evasion of the law. I think this is what the report really uncovers.”
The ACLU obtained the records for its report through public records act requests it made every year since 2018, and examined data for San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern counties. Despite state laws going into effect, such as the Values Act in 2018, local sheriffs have continued to cooperate with immigration officials.
How sheriffs in the San Joaquin Valley work with ICE
Three quarters of the undocumented community has lived in the San Joaquin Valley for more than 10 years, Romani said. They have families and contribute to the community.
“We have some sheriffs in the Central Valley with an anti-immigrant agenda that they want to pursue“ she said. “Sheriffs should not be tearing these families apart. That isn’t their job.”
The Values Act, commonly known as the state’s sanctuary law, was the third piece of legislation in recent years aimed at prohibiting local law enforcement cooperation with immigration agents.
The report provides screenshots of emails between ICE officials and personnel at the various sheriff’s offices in the region. In those emails, officials on both sides talk about finding ways to make it easier for ICE officers to arrest individuals at their facilities, and to increase the number of transfers to immigration agents.
A key finding Romani said was the “shadow transfers,” such as those happening in Fresno County. The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office has maintained arrests in the vestibule are not transfers, but rather rearrests.
Given the individuals are arrested by ICE in a secured area of the jail, those are in fact, transfers, she said. Yet, those transfers don’t get reported to the Attorney General’s Office or the public.
In a May 2018 email, ICE officials ask Fresno Sheriff’ Office officials if Sheriff Margaret Mims would consider meeting and making changes to make it easier for immigration officers to make arrests, and increase “morale” for ICE officers.
ICE agents were already using the secure vestibule area to make arrests, but they had to lock their firearms in a weapons safe before entering the locked room. They wanted to be able to make arrests in the booking area or in the secure sally port area — a practice they said was already allowed in Tulare, Madera, Merced and Kings counties.
Other examples of the cooperation include some sheriff’s offices, such as Stanislaus, working to release people from its jail at the most convenient time for ICE officers to show up and arrest them.
In an email exchange between Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office personnel and ICE officials, the Stanislaus staffer poses this question to the federal official: “What is the latest time we can notify ICE for a pick up for the same day Mon-Fri and how much time would they need to get here?” the April 2019 email reads.
Forty minutes later, the ICE officials responds: “I would say 3pm as we would need to pick up, process and then transport to Yuba or Bakersfield. Would probably take us an hour to get to Stan Jail from Stockton.”
“In some ways, it’s indicating that there are people that they don’t believe should be here. That they want ICE to be in the community,” Romani said of the sheriffs’ practices. “It sends the wrong message to our immigrant community that they are not safe here, and that’s not right.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Mims responded to the report. As she has previously told The Bee, Mims maintains she complies with the law regarding any cooperation with federal law enforcement agencies.
“It is obvious the authors of the report do not want any communication with ICE, however, that is not what the laws say,” she said in a Wednesday statement to The Bee. “One area of concern is what is considered a ‘transfer’. When ICE takes a person into custody in a public space it is an independent arrest by them and is not a transfer from the Sheriff’s Office.”
In the past, the Fresno Sheriff’s Office has maintained, the vestibule — the secured room at the county jail — is a public space. ICE arrests there, in the lobby or right outside the jail, they have said, are rearrests, not transfers.
“Transfers are rare due to the specific nature the crimes that meet the criteria of the law,” she said Wednesday. “We will continue to follow the law in our ongoing efforts to keep our communities safe.”
Ashley Ritchie, a spokeswoman for the Tulare County Sheriff’ Office, said the office abides by all state laws related to immigration.
“The report mentioned has zero documented cases of any violations as it pertains to the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office,” she told The Bee in a statement.
New revelations on Fresno County courthouse immigration arrests
The report also reveals new information on the cooperation from Mims with immigration officers for courthouse arrests.
On Feb. 9, 2018, ICE officers followed a community member into a courtroom and waited for the person’s hearing to end before proceeding to follow the person to arrest the individual, according to the report. When a Fresno County Sheriff’s Office staff member informed Mims about the arrest — and of ICE agents identifying themselves to “deputies” when they entered the courthouse — the sheriff responded to the email encouraging the practice.
“We will support this,” Mims wrote in a Feb. 9, 2018 email. “If anyone is contacted by the courts to have us restrict ICE let me know.”
“Good for ICE,” then-Assistant Fresno County Sheriff Tom Gattie added to the email exchange.
Those arrests became public months later when The Bee reported ICE was making arrests at the Fresno County Superior Court in July 2018, and officers were in plainclothes.
Mims didn’t responds to questions about her support for courthouse arrests on Wednesday.
What are the solutions?
The report found that over a quarter of immigration arrests in the San Joaquin Valley took place in local jails from October 2014 to May 2018. For that time period, 81% of ICE arrests in the region were facilitated by law enforcement, compared to a 19% of ICE arrests that happened throughout the community, the report found.
A reason as to why these practices are pervasive in the region is because the immigrant community faces high poverty levels, language barriers and there’s limited access to legal service providers, Romani said.
These practices affect entire families, not just the individual getting arrested by ICE, she said.
The report highlights several stories of individuals who have been arrested by ICE, such as that of a Kern County father whose three U.S. citizen daughters ended up in foster care while he was in immigration detention.
Romani said the solution to fix these issues is for state lawmakers to pass Assembly Bill 937, known as the VISION Act. The bill would prohibit state and local agencies from making any transfers to ICE.
The two-year bill passed the Assembly and is pending approval from the Senate.
“We want the senators in the Central Valley to read this report to see ... why we need a bright line rule like the VISION Act,” Romani said.
Michelle Sherwood, communications director for state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, said the senator “doesn’t usually comment on legislation until it’s in front of her.”
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 9:00 AM.
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