Margaret Mims’ time as Fresno County sheriff has passed. She recognized that, too
Margaret Mims has occupied the position of Fresno County sheriff for so long (15 years, 2 months) that her name and job title are practically synonymous.
Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims: five words that seem tethered together. That is, until Mims cut them loose by announcing her retirement rather than seeking a fifth term.
“It was not an easy decision because I love my job, I love the service and I love the people in Fresno County,” Mims said during a Feb. 18 press conference. “But after 42 years in law enforcement, it’s time and I get to have healthy years in my retirement.”
Mims spent most of those years shattering glass ceilings for women within the sheriff’s department. That alone is a great distinction. So too is hanging up her badge, rather than treating an elected position like a pseudo lifetime appointment.
In 2006, Mims just barely won her first term as Fresno County sheriff with 50.25 percent of the vote. (Her opponent, Cal Minor, received 49.59 percent.) But ever since it’s been a whitewash: Running unopposed, Mims’ majority topped 97 percent in both 2010 and 2014 before “dipping” to 95 percent in 2018. And there’s no reason to believe 2022 would’ve been any different.
Four more years to make it an even 20? Pfft, no problem. Instead, Mims surprised both her legions of supporters — and growing number of detractors — by stepping aside.
“Sixteen years as sheriff, it’s plenty,” Mims said, referring to when she will leave the office next January. “It’s enough.”
You’ll get no argument here. It’s time for Mims to go — and for Fresno County voters to be allowed a fresh set of choices that don’t carry the same weight of name recognition.
Get them to think about what they want and expect from a sheriff rather than mindlessly filling in an oval on the ballot.
As described by the California State Association of Counties, sheriffs have three primary duties: keep the peace in unincorporated areas; attend the courts; and operate the county jail. Most (including Fresno’s) also serve a dual role as coroner, giving them the added responsibility of determining the cause of all violent and unusual deaths.
COVID cases, jail deaths
Mims’ ability to carry out one of those responsibilities has been called into question more than once recently. In early 2021, The New York Times reported the Fresno County jail had more COVID-19 positives than any correctional facility in the country — a somewhat misleading distinction due to missing data. Not as easily refuted was a 2019 Sacramento Bee investigation that revealed no California jail saw a sharper increase in inmate deaths (and 47 total) between 2011-18 than the one under her direction.
But nowhere has the scrutiny on Mims been more intense than than the cozy relationship between the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as revealed by persistent digging by The Bee’s Yesenia Amaro, as well as a recent ACLU report.
In short, Mims has permitted ICE agents to make arrests in the courthouse and in a secure room inside the jail after they’ve been processed and released — a blatant skirt-around of the state’s sanctuary law.
In 2018, 102 immigrants went from the custody of the Fresno County sheriff’s to ICE custody, according to a Freedom of Information Act request returned by the federal agency. However, only four were reported to the California Department of Justice as official transfers.
What happened to the other 98? If the individuals involved had met the provisions of the California Values Act, which prohibits local law enforcement from transferring people to ICE without a warrant or probable cause to suspect serious or violent crimes, you can be sure Mims would’ve included them to the official tally she is duty bound to report.
Instead, Mims found a loophole in a law she personally doesn’t like and used it to push her own political views while further marginalizing Fresno County’s immigrant community.
Mims’ support of ICE clear
Mims would surely dispute that characterization. But on Feb. 9, 2018, after being informed by a staff member that ICE agents had made an arrest inside a courthouse at the conclusion of a hearing, Mims responded with an email giving her thumb’s up.
“We will support this,” Mims wrote. “If anyone is contacted by the courts to have us restrict ICE let me know.”
Let me know, and I’ll make any restrictions go away so that ICE can re-arrest and deport immigrants. And not just dangerous criminals with felony arrests and convictions whom we can officially transfer into their custody.
That’s what Mims appears to be saying.
Her attitudes reflect our community’s largest enduring blind spot regarding a group of people who are such a vital part of our farm-based economy, let alone our daily lives.
Fresno County takes great pride in our status as California’s highest grossing producer of agriculture. You hardly go a day without seeing a “My job depends on Ag” sticker on the back of someone’s bumper.
But what happens to all that ag production (and in turn all those ag-related jobs) without farmworkers, more than half of whom are undocumented immigrants? They die on the vine.
Hopefully the next Fresno County sheriff makes that logical leap more readily than Mims.
