In 2017, California passed the sanctuary state legislation (SB54) that severely limited how much local law enforcement can cooperate with federal authorities to enforce immigration law. The Newport Beach City Council unanimously opposed that legislation (I was one of the votes).
A number of cities throughout Orange County and the state also opposed the legislation, though the division and rhetoric sometimes ran hot. When a majority in Costa Mesa opposed SB54, one CM council member, now a County Supervisor, stated that opposing SB54 was akin to “stand[ing] on the side of hate and bigotry and divisive politics.”
Characterizing opponents of SB54 – including many in the law enforcement community – that way was wrong then and has proven disastrously wrong since then.
Just two years later, Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes released a statement highlighting that “restrictions outlined by SB 54 prevented the Sheriff’s Department from notifying ICE on the release of the remaining 1,015 inmates, despite the individuals having ICE detainers. Of those inmates, 238 individuals were re-arrested for new crimes in Orange County including on charges of assault and battery, rape, and robbery, among others.”
This isn’t a situation where the Sheriff or local police were enforcing federal immigration issues. It was simply whether ICE should know that a person who entered the country illegally has been arrested. And, as Sheriff Barnes noted, “rather than protect our immigrant community, the law has enabled offenders to be released, often times back into the immigrant communities they prey upon, and create new victims.”
Our Sheriff isn’t taking the issue lying down. Instead, he ensures that repeat or violent offenders’ release dates are publicly noticed and it’s then up to ICE whether to pick up the person in front of the jail (which ICE did 221 times last year).
This issue is back in the news regularly these days, with heavy criticism of the “sanctuary city” and “sanctuary state” models. I am certainly glad that we have Sheriff Don Barnes in charge and that, for now at least, a majority of Supervisors support him.
