The Orange County Sherriff’s Department in 2024 alerted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to 226 inmates who had finished serving their jail time, 186 of whom were taken into ICE custody.
The OC Board of Supervisors held its annual TRUTH Act hearing on Tuesday, March 25, a required forum to inform the public and the board on access the Sheriff’s Department has provided immigration officials to people it has detained and screenings conducted for federal authorities.
The 2017 TRUTH Act, or the Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds Act, is a California law to prevent unjust holds of individuals in local law enforcement custody for immigration agents. The Sheriff’s Department has to request an inmate’s written consent to be interviewed by ICE officials and also let an inmate know when they qualify to be transferred into federal custody.
The 226 notifications to ICE in 2024 was a slight increase from the year prior; however, in 2022, the Sheriff’s Department reported only 17 transfers. In 2017, some 580 people were released to ICE.
Immigrant advocates on Tuesday called on the Board of Supervisors and Sheriff Don Barnes to stop all ICE transfers. Though the Truth Act hearing is about inmates, they took the opportunity to speak about immigration policies in general, warning that President Donald Trump’s promises of national mass deportations have sparked increased fear and anxiety in the county’s immigrant community.
“Sheriff Don Barnes has the discretion to stop these transfers, yet OCSD continues to refer hundreds of community members to ICE,” said Faby Jacome, executive director of the Orange County Justice Fund. “Local law enforcement collaboration with ICE creates distrust and fear. Orange County families deserve protection, not betrayal. Please end all ICE transfers now.”
Barnes reiterated what’s been his message to the community since the Trump administration’s rapid onset of changes to the federal government’s immigration policies.
“We have not and will not participate in any local operations of enforcement actions by federal authorities enforcing immigration law. I have made clear to our federal partners that my policy and immigration enforcement will not change,” Barnes said. “That said, it is important to note that my department will in no way impede federal law enforcement officials from carrying out their official responsibilities.”
Barnes also detailed during the hearing several people who had been released from county jail and then arrested again for new crimes – the accompanying staff report said of 407 released inmates who did not meet the criteria for notification to ICE officials, 50 committed new crimes.
Carlos Perea, executive director of the Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice, argued the collaboration between local law enforcement and ICE does not make cities safer, but undermines public safety by building distrust and unfairly targeting communities of color.
Data obtained by the Harbor Institute from the Sheriff’s Department through the Public Records Act indicated community members born in Mexico and Vietnam accounted for more than half of ICE transfers from OCSD in 2024. Despite making up roughly 16% of the county’s immigrant population, 32% of people transferred were Vietnamese. Other countries included El Salvador, Guatemala, Columbia, and Romania.
And, Perea told supervisors, the federal government’s immigration policies could end up costing Orange County millions of dollars in economic impact.
The Harbor Institute estimates that if the more than 15,000 Orange County residents who have pending deportation cases as of January were to be detained, Orange County could lose out on more than $258 million in economic activity and more than $26 million in state and local taxes, according to a report it published Tuesday in partnership with the UCI School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic.
Barnes said there was “a lot of misinformation put out by the groups.”
“We never ask the immigration status of suspects, witnesses or those who report crimes,” he said. “We have not, and will not, participate in any local operations of enforcement actions by federal authorities enforcing immigration law.”
But Barnes also called for the repeal of SB 54, California’s so-called sanctuary state law, and argued that it would be “safer for everyone involved” if local law enforcement was allowed to cooperate more with federal immigration authorities.
The sheriff said the law prohibits him from releasing criminal offenders into ICE custody in a safe, controlled environment within the jail. As a result, ICE agents go into local communities to find and arrest criminal offenders and can take undocumented, but law-abiding residents into custody at the same time.
“Our law enforcement in Orange County is making sure that our top priority here is protecting Orange County residents and making sure that those who committed a crime are then sought by the full extent of what the sheriff has in his possession,” Supervisor Janet Nguyen said.
The number of screenings referred to ICE made up less than 1% of the 48,000 bookings last year, Supervisor Don Wagner added.
“I think that demonstrates the discretion and good judgment on the part of the sheriff and his team to, in fact, focus on those who are the most disruptive to our community and potentially doing the most damage out there,” Wagner said.
Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said the board has no oversight over the elected sheriff or his department policies.
“We have discretion over budgetary items over his department, but we don’t have oversight over his policy direction,” Sarmiento said. “I don’t think anybody wants to have people who violate the law, who commit crime, to go unpunished.”
But Orange County continues to lead neighboring counties in the number of inmates transferred to ICE, Sarmiento noted.
“There are some questions about why our numbers continue to be higher,” he said. “I don’t know if we’re doing a much more effective job or are we casting a wider net?”
“We want to make sure we address this and answer questions that members of the public have posed here today,” Sarmiento added. “We want to make sure we don’t simply go through a perfunctory hearing. Is this really achieving the goal that we all want, which is to have a safe community?”