The sheriff of San Diego county defied a new policy limiting county cooperation with federal immigration authorities, setting up a showdown over California’s efforts to shield residents from Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans. On Tuesday, San Diego county supervisors voted to prohibit its sheriff’s department from working with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) on the federal agency’s enforcement of civil immigration laws, including those that allow for deportations, the Guardian reports. California law already generally prohibits cooperation but makes exceptions for those convicted of certain violent crimes. The new policy brings San Diego in line with seven other counties in California, including Los Angeles, the nation’s largest, which recently adopted a policy that goes beyond state law.
But shortly after, Sheriff Kelly Martinez said the board does not set policy for the sheriff, who, like the supervisors, is an elected official. She said she would not honor the new policy. “Current state law strikes the right balance between limiting local law enforcement’s cooperation with immigration authorities, ensuring public safety and building community trust,” said Martinez, whose office is non-partisan but has identified as a Democrat. ICE relies heavily on local sheriffs to notify the agency of people in their custody and hold them temporarily, if asked, to allow federal officials time to arrest them on immigration charges. And during Trump’s first term, limiting cooperation between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration enforcement was one of the key ways states such as California tried to protect its non-citizen residents from deportation. Despite its sanctuary policy, San Diego County, with 3.3 million residents and its location on the US border with Mexico, is emerging as a key area where those tensions will play out. Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, has singled out the county as a place where the incoming administration’s plans are complicated by “sanctuary” laws, a loose term for state and local governments that restrict cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
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