SAN JOSE – The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to explore ways to soften the county’s sanctuary policy, allowing local law enforcement to notify immigration authorities when an undocumented immigrant with a history of violent or other serious crime is released from jail.

The vote, shortly before 6 p.m., came after a 7½-hour meeting where emotions ran high and tempers sometimes flared, as the public weighed in on changing the policy, which currently forbids such notification.

More than 300 people showed up for the meeting, forcing officials to close the doors and send the overflow crowd to another room, where they could watch the debate on a television screen. Supervisors Mike Wasserman, Dave Cortese, Joseph Simitian and Cindy Chavez voted to approve the two proposals put before the board, which authorize staff and local law enforcement to investigate possible mechanisms for the policy shift and report back within 60 days.

“I am in favor of removing individuals who have committed serious and violent crimes, and have been convicted of doing so, from our communities however and whenever possible,” Wasserman said, stressing that his plan would not remove sanctuary protections against civil detainer requests from immigration agents.

Supervisor Susan Ellenberg was the lone opposition vote against the proposals, saying they would needlessly change “a policy that is working,” and argued that immigrants were being scapegoated for fueling crime when studies show they commit fewer crimes on average than U.S.-born residents.

She added that with any sanctuary policy changes, “public safety may be negligibly impacted but the impact on tens of thousands of vulnerable, law abiding residents and on vulnerable children in our county would be substantial, traumatic and lasting.”

The move to modify the county’s policy came in the wake of the brutal killing of 59 year-old Bambi Larson in her South San Jose home in February, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant wanted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Local law enforcement leaders proposed an amendment to the policy that would allow notification in cases where an undocumented immigrant who had committed crimes of violence or other serious offenses was about to be freed. County police leaders and the District Attorney have already drafted language for such a change.

Santa Clara County’s policy is stricter than state law, which bars law enforcement officials from aiding ICE by detaining undocumented immigrants but allows notification about inmates’ release. A majority of speakers at Tuesday’s meeting, however, appeared to oppose any alteration to a policy they see as a beacon for other counties.

Katiuska Pimentel Vargas, an undocumented San Jose resident and organizer with the Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education Network, told the supervisors that for immigrants already fearful of authorities, there is no middle ground for local police to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“You can’t be pro-ICE and be an ally of my community,” Pimentel said.

The fallout from Larson’s killing on Feb. 28 — and the subsequent arrest of Carlos Arevalo-Carranza, 24, a native of El Salvador who, according to ICE officials, was the subject of six civil detainer requests denied by the county — has created fault lines in a liberal community where views on immigration have been relatively homogenous.

Rick Loek, a cousin of Larson, said he was surprised by how controversial the policy proposal change had become.

“This is a game of Russian roulette,” he said. “You don’t know when we release one of these people what’s going to happen.”

“I’m surprised anybody would argue in favor of keeping a violent criminal in this country,” he said. “And I want to be careful with my words — it’s not, ‘throw everybody out.’ Our country was founded on welcoming people here.”

Wasserman’s and Cortese’s proposals, which were enjoined during Tuesday’s meeting, would bring the county in line with state sanctuary law, known as the California Values Act. Like the county’s policy, the state law prohibits the honoring of civil detainer requests from ICE agents looking to deport criminal immigrants through administrative means. The law also requires federal immigration authorities to obtain warrants if they wish inmates to be held beyond their release date for ICE to pick up.

Wasserman’s proposal also would formally codify the county’s routine rejection of such detainers, and the warrant requirement.

Cortese said he wanted clarity for “ambiguous language” in the county’s policies, and like Wasserman, asked that any proposed changes be narrow in scope. Simitian voiced distrust of working with ICE, and acknowledged many speakers’ concerns that immigration fixes were being mismatched against criminal-justice problems.

“We are stuck at an intersection of criminal law and immigration policy. That’s kind of just where we are,” Simitian said. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation is we didn’t have an utterly dysfunctional immigration policy.”

In voting to approve the policy study, Chavez noted the value of unpacking the myriad issues surrounding the ICE notification discussion, particularly on the impact on affected families, and establishing meaningful communication with the federal agency.

“The fact of the matter is, for an organization that has such direct impact on our community, we should be talking to them,” she said.

San Jose police contend that Arevalo-Carranza “stalked” both the neighborhood and Larson before the crime. His burglary and false imprisonment charges, they say, would have allowed notification under the state law. Ellenberg, however, challenged that notion, arguing the law did not support that conclusion.

In brief remarks, San Jose police Chief Eddie Garcia said the notifications are a matter of doing “everything to keep our residents and our police officers safe.” District Attorney Jeff Rosen also issued a statement saying that such a policy change is a safety issue, and that deporting violent criminals should be an option to protect the immigrant communities they often prey upon.

But Public Defender Molly O’Neal warned against a policy that could “revive the jail-to-immigration detention pipeline” that fuels immigrant suspicion of law enforcement.

Immigration-rights advocates who oppose the proposed changes said that more attention needs to be paid to other factors they believe played a role in crimes like Larson’s killing, including drug addiction, homelessness, and violence against women. Lessening the county’s sanctuary protections, they said, continues what they see as the demonizing and persecution of immigrants by the Trump administration.

“This legislation threatens our sanctuary ordinance and sanctuary ordinances across the nation and state,” said Francisco Ugarte, who heads the Immigration Defense Unit in the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. Ugarte successfully defended Jose Ines Garcia Zarate in the fatal 2015 shooting of Pleasanton resident Kate Steinle, a crime that helped fuel Trump’s hard-line immigration platform.

“It is pure fallacy that whittling away sanctuary protections will protect public safety,” Ugarte said.