Santa Barbara Supes and Sheriff Grapple with Mass Deportations
California Allows Sheriff to Tell ICE When Undocumented Inmates Are to Be Released
With President-elect Donald Trump having pledged to lead the biggest mass deportation effort in history, many of the county supervisors are concerned what role the county jail might play in that agenda.
“I do believe we are at a juncture of history, and we will be judged by how we respond to the scapegoating of immigrants,” declared Supervisor Laura Capps. “What we are getting at is more fundamental to who we are as a people.” She appealed to Sheriff Bill Brown as both a keen student of history and as a man of compassion to share his own thoughts about the historic moment.
Brown stressed that his department does not, and will not, enforce federal immigration law, and it does not, and will not, participate in federal immigration actions. But his department does follow the state rules that allow — under a set of confusing rules and regulations — local law enforcement officials to notify federal immigration authorities when undocumented immigrants charged or convicted of certain crimes are scheduled to be released.
In recent years, those number of people who have been deported by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has been low. In 2022, only two were deported. In 2023, it was five. And in 2024, it was 16.
More than a dozen speakers argued that the sheriff should follow the lead of Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Diego counties and opt not to notify feds of such release dates. By not doing this, they argued, Brown was increasing the fear that already exists within Santa Barbara’s immigrant communities, making immigrants less likely — not more — to come forward as either witnesses to or victims of crime.
In response, Brown noted that only 40 of 141 inmates he reported to the feds in 2023 were first offenders; 57, he said, had been booked five times or more. One inmate had been booked 74 times. Brown argued that the majority of their victims were disproportionately people of color. “There are always two sides to the story,” he said.
Supervisor Steve Lavagnino expressed no interest in going to bat for anyone booked 74 times. Supervisor Das Williams wanted to know what percentage of these inmates had been actually convicted, not merely charged. If it was the latter, he expressed certainty that some of the 16 people re-arrested this year had to have been innocent. Brown said that his department does not break down the stats that way.
Williams expressed skepticism about the precision with which federal immigration officials executed their mission. He told the story of one of his wife’s Navajo uncles who’d been deported to Mexico two times even though his people had been occupying the same piece of land in Arizona for 500 years.
Supervisor Bob Nelson suggested Trump might not carry through on his campaign promise; Barack Obama, he noted, deported 47 percent more immigrants than Trump ever did. Ultimately, no action was taken other than the report issued.
But if Trump tried to make good on his campaign platform, Laura Capps implored Sheriff Brown to alert the supervisors. Supervisor Lavagnino agreed. “I really want to know when that worm turns,” he said.
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