About a dozen immigration agents huddled just before dawn outside an Ace Hardware store in Jurupa Valley, a semi-rural city in Riverside County.

They were equipped with firearms, protective vests and intelligence on the morning routines of the six men they were seeking.

It was 4 a.m. Thursday, June 22, and many of the men would soon be on their way to work or coming home from a night shift.

One by one, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officers discussed their targets:

• A 24-year-old man from Mexico who had been deported in 2011 following an arrest for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He came back to the U.S. and had been arrested four times since 2014 for assault with a deadly weapon and convicted of assault charges last year.

• A 28-year-old Mexican man deported in 2013 after he was convicted of possessing a controlled substance for sale. He also was arrested in May for driving under the influence.

• A 46-year-old Lebanese man who had a 2009 deportation order. He was convicted earlier this year of assault with a deadly weapon.

Members of ICE’s L.A.-area fugitive operations teams were briefed before embarking on the six-hour enforcement operation to find and arrest undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes and later released from local jails.

While immigrant advocates have voiced concern about recent enforcement operations, ICE says it could be taking a higher number of convicted criminals into custody — and more easily — if not for internal law enforcement agency policies and state laws.

“These policies that some cities and jurisdictions have created — that’s definitely hampered us,” said David Marin, field office director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in Los Angeles. “So we’ve had to sort of adjust our resources to go out into the communities and apprehend these individuals instead of apprehending them in a secure environment.”

• PHOTOS: The ICE Fugitive Enforcement Operations Team arrests undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes in Southern California

And ICE officials say they would be further constrained by the possible implementation of Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act. The legislation, sometimes referred to as a ‘sanctuary state’ bill, has been passed by the state Senate and is making its way through the Assembly.

“It would put a limit with the working relationships that we have with the law enforcement agencies,” said Thomas P. Giles, deputy field director for ICE’s Los Angeles-area office. “It would be difficult for us.”

On that cool June morning, ICE officers arrested five men, including two who were not intended targets, after stopping their vehicles or going to their houses.

The circumstances of these arrests, ICE suggests, could have been different.

Unlike most sheriff’s departments in Southern California, Riverside County “prohibits ICE from accessing its jails” to conduct interviews or to pick up inmates at the time of their release, said ICE western regional spokeswoman Virginia Kice, citing her operational colleagues in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations.

The county also doesn’t notify ICE when individuals of interest are being released, so that immigration officers can take them into custody at the jails, she said.

Riverside County Assistant Sheriff Jerry Gutierrez disputed the federal agency’s assertions, saying ICE is allowed in its jails if inmates agree and sign a consent form to be interviewed by the agency as required by state law.

That does not mean, however, that “ICE roams our hallways in our jail,” Gutierrez said.

The department also notifies ICE about two hours before individuals of interest are being released, he said.

Degrees of cooperation

Whether and how law enforcement agencies in the state cooperate with ICE in custody operations varies greatly from county to county, said Angela Chan, policy director and senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, which promotes the rights of Asian and Pacific Islander communities.

“Some counties do let ICE have free rein in the jails. Some put limits (on ICE’s interaction with inmates) like Trust Act limits,” Chan said. “San Francisco and Santa Clara don’t allow ICE into their jails at all.”

The Trust Act, which went into effect in January 2014, limits when local jails can hold people extra time for deportation purposes. Under it, law enforcement agencies can only hold inmates with most felonies and a number of other crimes for longer than their release date so that ICE has extra time to take them into custody.

• RELATED STORY: Deportation fears stop some LA County immigrants from applying for EBT program

Trust Act advocates say the law encourages immigrants who are crime victims or witnesses to cooperate with police without fear of deportation. It was intended to rebuild trust following the implementation of the Secure Communities deportation program, which relied on cooperation between local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

But the Trust Act’s impact is largely moot today, because no local law enforcement agency in California is known to honor these immigration holds issued by ICE due to a 2014 federal court decision out of Clackamas County, Ore., said Jennie Pasquarella of the American Civil Liberties Union of California.

“They don’t want to be sued,” she said.

The judge in that case found a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights to unreasonable search and seizure were violated by holding her in jail for close to 20 hours after her case was settled so that ICE could ascertain her immigration status.

Trust Act limits

However, some law enforcement agencies in the state, including Los Angeles and Orange counties, have chosen to apply Trust Act limits to other custody functions in the jails, further restricting ICE’s access to inmates.

“The Trust Act sets the floor, not the ceiling,” Chan explained. “Counties can choose to go above the Trust Act and enact more protections for immigrants.”

• RELATED STORY: In ‘act of non-cooperation,’ LAUSD bolsters protections for immigrant students, families

These restrictions in California are significant because since 1996, the criminal justice system has been “the major funnel” through which immigration authorities detain immigrants for removal rather than going out into neighborhoods, factories and the fields, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University School of Law. The Institute is a nonpartisan think tank whose research has supported granting legal status to undocumented immigrants.

“California is clearly in the forefront of states and localities in limiting the ability of ICE to apprehend and remove people from within the criminal justice system,” he said.

About 70 percent of all immigration enforcement that happens in the U.S. is the result of cooperation with local law enforcement, Pasquarella said.

A ‘brighter line of separation’

If SB 54 becomes state law, it would go even further than the Trust Act by prohibiting the use of state and local public resources to aid federal ICE agents in deportation actions.

It also would prohibit ICE from interviewing inmates or picking inmates up at jails, with certain exceptions, unless the agency obtains a warrant. The California Values Act “would draw a brighter line between local law enforcement and state law enforcement and ICE” and would also close loopholes left by the Trust Act due to evolving ICE tactics, said Chan, who co-wrote the Trust Act and SB 54.

While ICE agents used to rely on immigration detainers to get people from local jails, they now make notification and transfer requests to law enforcement agencies, which are honored to various degrees, she said.

“When local law enforcement is engaged in deportations, it scares community members, creates fear, and community members are afraid to come forward and report if they are witnesses to crime,” Chan argued.

• RELATED STORY: ICE arrests increase under Trump showing ‘gloves are being taken off’

While the bill has been lauded by Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, it concerns many local sheriffs. Among them is L.A. County Sheriff Jim McDonnell, who says he’s been able to work within the parameters of state laws to balance public safety and public trust.

SB 54 “would limit access by ICE to our jail facilities,” McDonnell said, resulting in serious offenders whom ICE would normally interact with in being released into their communities, “thereby creating a risk to those communities.”

Trust may be eroded

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department allows ICE into its jails to conduct interviews with certain inmates and allows immigration agents to pick them up at the time of their release. However, the department allows ICE to do these things only with inmates who have serious offenses specified under the Trust Act, McDonnell said.

If ICE is forced to seek out their targets in the community rather than at the jails, they will likely arrest more people with them who were not their intended targets, the bill’s critics say.

“We’ll all be painted as part of that equation,” McDonnell said. “And the word on the street, unfortunately, will be that the police came and deported this family or that family. And all of the hard work done for so many years to build trust with our communities could potentially be eroded overnight.”

For example, authorities were looking for his 24-year-old son during the June operation in Riverside County, but they ended up arresting Fidel Delgado Guerrero, who had been previously deported but had no criminal record.

His wife also had been previously deported. She will be served with a letter to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, an ICE official said.

The two have five children.

“We don’t do any wrong by coming here to work and move our families forward,” Delgado said. “Being illegal is the only problem I have.”

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which has its own federally trained deputies who interview inmates about their immigration status, also notifies ICE of undocumented individuals in its custody who have been convicted of specified serious offenses. ICE is able to pick them up, if they choose, once they are released.

“Shared communication between the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the federal government has resulted in several dangerous undocumented offenders being removed from our community,” Orange County sheriff’s Lt. Lane Lagaret said in an email.

• RELATED STORY: Families of undocumented immigrants using GoFundMe for aid in legal fights with ICE

Like many other counties, San Bernardino County does not restrict ICE’s access to inmates with only serious and other offenses.

State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, who introduced SB 54, dismissed the sheriffs’ concerns, saying ICE agents are already in the community “tearing apart families.”

He also echoed concerns voiced by Los Angeles officials that deportation fears have resulted in drops in domestic violence as well as sexual assault reports among Hispanics.

“Crimes are not being reported, and criminals remain free to claim more victims,” de León said in a statement. “Our communities are becoming less – not more – safe.”

Pasquarella of the ACLU acknowledged that it may be easier for ICE to apprehend people who are already at the jails.

“But it doesn’t mean that’s what should happen,” she said, “and it doesn’t mean ICE can’t do their work through other ways.”

Bill’s future uncertain

But whether SB 54 will ultimately be signed into law and how much of an impact it would truly have is still up in the air.

Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute noted that Gov. Jerry Brown did not sign the Trust Act in its first iteration. It was only after the bill was amended, and a number of law enforcement officials came onboard, that he signed it, he said.

But Chan, who argued instead that it was activists’ efforts that led to Brown’s 2013 signature, says there’s a much different climate today under President Donald Trump in which essentially all undocumented immigrants are vulnerable to deportation. If the California Values Act passes the Assembly and the governor waits to sign it, “who knows how many immigrants can be deported under the Trump administration?” she said.

There’s also federal legislation in the works that, if passed, could conflict with SB 54. For example, House Resolution 3003, the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, passed the House in June. It would require state and local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and strip certain grant funds from jurisdictions that do not comply.

And SB 54 could be challenged by the courts.

Chishti noted that case law on such issues favors states and localities, such as the Oregon case regarding immigration detainers and other cases in which judges ruled that you cannot force local jurisdictions to comply with these federal requests.

“If that realm of thinking prevails, then the states would prevail,” he said.

But Everard Meade, director of the Trans-Border Institute at UC San Diego, which aims to build sustainable peace in Mexico and the border region, said local law enforcement agencies will not be able to totally shut out the federal government.

“The courts won’t allow that,” he said. “If you look at the mandate for immigration law under the executive branch, it’s continually broadened. There’s a lot of things they can do.”

And all these law enforcement policies, state laws and bills are really on the margins of the real issue at hand, Meade said.

“We have 11 million in the U.S. who don’t have (legal) status, and an immigration system that’s fundamentally broken and has been for a very long time,” he said. “And no progress on fixing it in a generation. That’s what it boils down to.”

Personal impact

For some, law enforcement cooperation with ICE is a matter of life and death.

San Fernando Valley resident Rodrigo Macias lost his fiancee and the mother of his child, Sandra Duran, in a car crash earlier this year that allegedly involved an undocumented immigrant who had been deported five times.

“I think she would still be here if there was more cooperation between (LAPD’s) Chief Beck, the mayor and the governor, but they are against that,” said Macias, 39, of Arleta. “All politicians want is votes.”

Meanwhile, for Anselmo Moran Lucero, 50, his time in the U.S. is likely over.

He first came to the U.S. when he was 16. He has six children; four are adults. He worked as a gardener.

Moran was deported in 2007 because he previously had been convicted of felony corporal injury to a spouse that resulted in a six-month jail term. He was arrested by authorities in Orange County in 2014 on a domestic violence charge. ICE lodged a detainer. He was cited and released the day of his arrest.

ICE came for him Thursday, June 22.

“I have to recognize that the laws here in the United States are very strict. I feel like I’m a bad person who ruined my record here in this country,” he said.

About the Trust Act

The Trust Act, which went into effect in January 2014, prohibits local police and sheriff’s departments from holding most low-level, nonviolent inmates longer than their release dates so that ICE can have more time to take them into custody. (This is called honoring an immigration detainer or hold). The law allows immigration holds for those with most felony convictions and those accused of felonies under specified circumstances, as well as some higher level misdemeanor convictions within 5 years and for certain federal criminal convictions.

About the Truth Act

The Truth Act, which went into effect Jan. 1, requires local law enforcement agencies to provide a written consent form to a person in custody that ICE wants to interview. The forms, which must be provided in advance, explain the interview’s purpose, that it’s voluntary and that the inmate may decline. In addition, when a law enforcement agency provides ICE with notification of an individual’s release date and time, the agency also must provide that person and their attorney (or designee) with that notification.

About the California Values Act (SB 54)

The act would generally prohibit state and local law enforcement agencies from using their resources to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect or arrest people for immigration enforcement purposes.

For example, it would ban these agencies from detaining someone on the basis of a hold request unless ICE obtains a judicial warrant. In certain cases, it also would prohibit them from providing release dates or other information unless it’s available to the public. It would also prohibit giving federal immigration officers access to interview a person in custody and with some exceptions, transferring them to ICE, without a judicial warrant.