The testimony was both passionate and sobering — stories of immigrant mothers being yanked out of car windows in front of their children by federal ICE agents — but the county supervisors concluded there was little they could do in the moment except to express their own outrage.
“As we watch our rights being thrown out the window, these are very petrifying times to be in our country right now,” said Supervisor Laura Capps in a meeting room packed with immigration rights activists from Santa Maria to Oxnard. The intensity of the moment was obviously fueled by the Trump Administration’s policy of mass deportations and its open disregard for the due process considerations promised in the Constitution.
All but two of the 35 people who spoke urged the supervisors to stop County Sheriff Bill Brown from collaborating in any manner with federal agents working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. More specifically, they didn’t want Brown turning county jail inmates who were in the country illegally over to ICE. Under state law, Brown is already limited in the degree to which he can communicate with ICE, but given recent accounts of ICE agents hauling away an immigrant father at an Oxnard gas station in front of his child, anything seemed too much.
While the supervisors never came out and said so, Brown — as an independently elected official — calls the shots when it comes to running the county jail; it’s his domain. Brown was not present — much to the consternation of many in the crowd, but his undersheriff Craig Bonner was. Bonner repeatedly notified the supervisors that any changes in inmate release policy to ICE was strictly up to his boss.
When pressed by Supervisor Joan Hartmann about giving the Public Defender more than an hour’s advance notice that ICE agents were on the way to pick up their clients — in the interest of due process, she said — Bonner would reply only, “We will listen to you.” But he also said, “That’s the Sheriff’s decision.” Beyond that, Bonner repeatedly stated, “We follow state law,” and “We are not enforcing federal immigration law.”
When it comes to actual numbers, the most recent figures tell a mixed story. In 2024 — the last year for which stats are available — the Sheriff allowed ICE to “re-arrest” 16 county jail inmates. That’s up from five the previous year. But ICE expressed interest in re-arresting 229 in 2024. And that’s up from 141 the year before.
State law is designed to maintain a strict distance between ICE and local law enforcement agencies because it allows immigrants to talk to police and sheriff deputies without fear of deportation.
Activists gathered outside the County Administration Building on Tuesday before heading into the Board of Supervisors meeting room on Tuesday. | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom
California sheriffs are legally required to issue a public report every year listing the number of undocumented inmates “re-arrested” by ICE. County sheriffs are not allowed to ask about an inmate’s immigration status or to contact ICE directly. Instead, ICE must rely on the federal Department of Justice, which spits out that info based upon fingerprints of all inmates it receives from local jail facilities. At that point, ICE can make inquiries. Santa Barbara County jail personnel then screen the criminal records of the inmates in question; if their records are sufficiently hardcore, jail officials are legally allowed to notify ICE of the inmates’ release dates.
But as Undersheriff Bonner also said — repeatedly — the jail doesn’t hold anyone longer than their sentence just so ICE can get there and take them away. In fact, he stressed, the inmates are walked out of the back of the jail and released with their belongings. If ICE agents just happen to be there, then the inmates can be “re-arrested.”
Many activists at the meeting thought this was too cute by half. They accused Brown of masking the true extent of his cooperation with ICE by not including the number of undocumented inmates that his correctional officers “transfer” by more direct means.
Bonner noted that a “transfer” prisoner is kept in handcuffs, never given their belongings back, and never “released” so that they can be “re-arrested.” A representative of State Assembly member Gregg Hart testified that Bonner’s definition of a “transfer” was sharply at odds with a much narrower one issued by state attorney Rob Bonta.
“Our souls are being broken as we have seen how our children are left alone because of the Sheriff’s collaboration with ICE,” said Reynaldo Rodriguez from Santa Maria. “I’m here for you to invest yourself in the unification of our families instead of the separation of our families.”
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