On Aug. 23, The Intercept published the second story in its series focusing on sanctuary states for undocumented immigrants. The article details email correspondence between Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials discussing SB 54—a bill proposed in the California Legislature that would give undocumented immigrants “sanctuary state” level protections—and looking for information to help his case against it.
Brown had requested statistics from ICE on inmates released in 2016, which he didn’t receive. In an email dated April 1, 2017, Brown said the information “would have been very valuable, and I suspect would have reflected very beneficially on ICE, in my numerous recent meetings with legislators, advocacy groups, and the media re: SB 54 and immigration issues generally.”
Brown, who is also the president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association (CSSA), spoke with the Sun about why he communicated with ICE and his stance on SB 54.
“My personal feelings and my representation of the sheriffs are really in tune with each other,” Brown said. “I believe the vast majority of the sheriffs, police chiefs, and law enforcement professionals in the state believe this is a bad bill and that it’s bad public policy and in its current form would not be something we would want to see enacted.”
The sheriff said the CSSA had proposed amendments to the bill—introduced by state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León—that included exceptions to allow local law enforcement to work with ICE in investigating criminal activity as well as communicate with the federal agency when someone is released from custody.
ICE issues what they call “detainers” to local law enforcement agencies and requests that they hold subjects suspected of violating immigration law for 48 hours past the time they would be adjudicated locally. Currently, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office does not do that, but they do notify ICE—at the agency’s request—when they are going to release someone from custody.
Brown said this was done to comply with federal law and to ensure safety for all parties potentially involved.
“So if [ICE] wants to pick that person up, they can be there at the time of release and pick that person up and they can do so in a jail setting, which is a much safer way to apprehend someone for them than to go out in the community and conduct a field operation where they would actually be going into residences or places of work or some public place to stop, detain, and arrest people,” Brown explained. “If we don’t facilitate those jail-based transfers, ICE is going to step up their operations in our communities and those are far less safe, they are much more intrusive, and they can result in pursuits, confrontations, and violence.”
He added that law-abiding undocumented immigrants could be picked up in that process. “They’ll be scooped up at the same time—they’ll end up being collaterally picked up by ICE—so we think it’s actually less intrusive if they actually take people into custody at the jail setting than in the community.”
According to Brown, a chief concern law enforcement agencies have with SB 54 is that it would prohibit them from turning over serious and violent criminals to federal authorities. And while de León and proponents say there’s an exception to the bill that allows those convicted of certain crimes to be picked up, opponents argue the base requirement is thinly defined by two state statutes, which are related to the three strikes law, Brown said.
Certain violent crimes are left out of the exceptions, Brown said, such as the rape of an unconscious person, assault of a police officer, or solicitation of murder. Other crimes that Brown views as serious are left out too, including property crimes like burglary or certain kinds of theft. Repeat drunk driving and domestic violence would also be omitted, he said.
“I think there are a lot of unintended consequences in this Legislation, and if it’s going to move forward in the Legislature, it really needs to be cleaned up,” he added.
In April, the Senate passed the bill in a 27-12 vote along party lines with Democrats in support. The bill is currently moving through the state Assembly. Brown said that the CSSA met with de León early in the process but that the two parties had not spoken since the sheriffs submitted their proposed amendments.
De León’s office did not immediately respond to the Sun’s request for comment.
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 7, 2017.