In a letter to state Senate Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell voiced opposition to a bill that would declare all of California a “sanctuary state,” echoing sentiments from sheriffs in Southern California’s other counties.

De Leon, D-Los Angeles, introduced Senate Bill 54 in December, which would limit involvement by law enforcement agencies in any federal immigration enforcement action in the state.

The bill was approved by the Senate appropriations committee in a 5-2 vote on Monday and ordered for third reading in the state Senate.

In his March 9 letter to de Leon, McDonnell said the bill would prevent the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department from responding to requests by federal immigration agents to be notified when its jails are housing inmates who might be subject to deportation.

LASD runs all of the county’s jails. McDonnell said the department’s current practice is to release inmates being investigated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, directly into the custody of their agents.

If that transfer process is severed, McDonnell said the result would be ICE agents fanning out into neighborhoods across the region in search of undocumented immigrants with orders for deportation.

“SB 54 would not allow the safe transfer of custody; rather it would force immigration enforcement agents into our communities in order to search out and find the person they seek,” McDonnell said. “While doing this, they will most surely cast a wide net over our communities, apprehending and detaining those not originally the target of the enforcement actions.”

McDonnell said he feared such ICE raids would mean the “complete and total loss of trust and cooperation with any law enforcement agency” among immigrant communities in the region.

The scenario McDonnell described already appears to be happening, according to Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. A recent example, he said, was when Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez was arrested by ICE agents on Feb. 28 as he dropped his daughter off at school in Los Angeles’ Highland Park neighborhood.

Avelica-Gonzalez was targeted for arrest, ICE officials said in a statement, because he has several prior criminal convictions, including a DUI conviction from 2009 and an outstanding order of removal dating back to 2014.

The California TRUST Act, McDonnell said, sufficiently prevents the unlawful detention of people who are subjects of enforcement by federal immigration agents.

The bill, approved and signed into law in 2013, prohibits law enforcement agencies from detaining people beyond when they are eligible for release at the request of ICE unless they are charged with specific crimes.

Over the past month, de Leon’s staff, along with organizations like the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, sought support from McDonnell for SB 54, Newman said.

Newman called McDonnell’s letter “outrageous” and said collusion between the Sheriff’s Department and ICE already creates a division between the department and the communities its serves.

“We were hoping the Sheriff’s Department would have a constructive instead of destructive role in the development of SB 54,” Newman said. “Everyone agrees that, in some form, this bill will be signed into law. Really, the question is whether the sheriff wants to have input on the bill or not.”

Drawing a line in the sand, Newman said McDonnell “is siding with the Trump administration over Sen. de Leon.”

McDonnell isn’t the only Southern California sheriff taking issue with SB 54. Sheriffs for Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties have voiced opposition to the bill.

In a March 3 letter to state Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens urged Bates, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and one possible vote against the bill, to oppose the bill.

Hutchens said SB 54 would put local law enforcement agencies “in the unenviable position of being in conflict with federal law.”

“Sheriffs across California will have to choose whether to honor current agreements with the federal government or to violate California law,” Hutchens said in her letter. “Placing law enforcement in the middle of constitutional conflicts does not help maintain or improve the conditions of public safety in our state.”

Hutchens’ department has a unique relationship with ICE given that ICE rents jail space from Orange County to hold detainees. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s current agreement with ICE runs through 2020 and pays the department an estimated $22 million annually, according to Hutchens.

In a letter to Riverside County legislative representatives, Sheriff Stan Sniff strongly opposed the bill, saying that it lacked clarity, and that efforts to prohibit conversations between local law enforcement and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would make things difficult for people of interest to ICE and their families.

Sniff agreed with McDonnell’s concern that the bill would push ICE into residential neighborhoods.

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Sarkis Ohannessian said San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon and the California State Sheriff’s Association have come out against the bill.

They said SB 54 would pose a public safety concern for their communities by preventing them from sharing information with federal law enforcement agencies. The sheriff’s investigators in San Bernardino did just that while investigating the terrorist attack on the Inland Regional Center in Dec. 2015, Ohannessian said.

City police chiefs routinely declined to comment on the bill. However, the Long Beach Police Department issued a statement that said the department “supports measures to either continue incarceration or to deport violent and serious offenders who pose a threat to our community.”

Staff writers Larry Altman, Elizabeth Chou, Jeremiah Dobruck, Tony Saavedra, Michael Watanabe and Grace Wyler contributed to this report.