Santa Barbara Supervisors Try To Take Stand Against ICE

The term “law and order” got tossed around a fair amount during the county supervisors’ special hearing this Tuesday. Under discussion was how to best stand up to ICE enforcement actions now taking place throughout Santa Barbara County. Acknowledging the lack of clarity as to what legal authority their actions would actually carry, or even how their resolutions could be enforced, the supervisors nevertheless agreed that ICE’s conduct in the county bore little resemblance to “law and order.” ICE agents have reportedly arrested 1,897 suspected unlawful immigrants in the 805 area code this year. 

Supervisor Roy Lee, an immigrant who moved here from Taiwan with his parents, co-authored the three-part measure along with Supervisor Laura Capps. “My mom and dad walk down the street with their U.S. papers all the time now,” he stated. “They are terrified that ICE will pick them up and I won’t know where they are. I support law and order, but with ICE, what we see is not law and order. It’s chaos. Pure chaos.”

On paper, the supervisors voted 4-1 to ban ICE agents from using county public spaces to launch unauthorized enforcement actions. They voted unanimously to have county election officers craft a plan of response should ICE agents seek to disrupt the upcoming elections this June and November. And they voted 4-1 to instruct county planning staff to explore all available avenues to prevent ICE from opening new detention facilities on property under county jurisdiction. Supervisor Bob Nelson cast the sole dissenting votes. 

Supervisor Steve Lavagnino cautioned against passing measures worded in ways that would give at-risk county residents a false sense of security. When he and other supervisors pressed County Counsel Rachel Van Mullem for legal clarification, Van Mullem said that it would depend on the specific facts of a situation. For example, did the ICE agents have a warrant for their enforcement actions? And if so, did that warrant need to be signed by a judge, or would a simple administrative warrant — signed by their home office — suffice? If a detention facility was proposed, was it on federally owned land or in a privately owned warehouse? 

The more critical question was what enforcement actions could the county take in any situation. For instance: What if ICE agents congregated at the Tucker’s Grove county park to launch a raid for which they lacked adequate warrants? Would the county sheriff roll out deputies to stop them?

Not likely, according to Sheriff Bill Brown, who cautioned the supervisors that ICE is constitutionally authorized to enforce U.S. immigration laws no matter what various state and county elected officials might think about it. The supervisors were unequivocally told that federal agents were barred by law from encroaching within 100 feet of a polling place. No guns, they were also told, were allowed at polling places.

Among the 27 public speakers was an immigration attorney representing a young girl detained in ICE’s detention facility in Santa Maria. He related how the girl described the ICE agents’ threats. She said they wanted to know where her parents were, and if she didn’t tell them, they would call Child Protective Services. She told her lawyer that they said: “You do know we can go hunt [your father] down at his house.’”

“It’s not about the law,” the lawyer told the supervisors. “It’s about the violence.”

Before the comment portion of the meeting, Supervisor Lavagnino had seemed skeptical about supporting the proposals to restrain ICE, but after hearing from the public, he appeared to flip.

He recounted how Trump had publicly threatened to federalize elections in 15 states, even though the Constitution explicitly gives states sole discretion over how elections are conducted. And as for ICE and how ICE agents have conducted themselves, he was openly appalled. “I’m a law-and-order guy, too,” he said, “but what I’ve seen from ICE in the past year is unconscionable — snatching people off the street, separating families.” He added he didn’t want to be explain to his grandkids how he couldn’t support the proposal because of some hairsplitting differences he might have about judicial versus administrative warrants. “So, I’ll be supporting the proposals,” he said.

Capps, who spent considerable effort incubating this measure, noted that the sheriff of Riverside County, Chad Bianco — also a Republican candidate for governor — had seized more than 650,000 ballots from the county elections office on the grounds that they might reveal voter fraud. They did not. Voters in Santa Barbara need to know their rights, she said. They needed to know they are safe. “We have the power of communication in our office,” she stated. “We need to use it.”

On May 5, county elections officials are scheduled to appear before the board to discuss their plans to make that happen.