For the first time, San Diego County has made the Justice Department’s list of law enforcement jurisdictions that limit cooperation with immigration officers in jails.

It is only the second time the weekly report has been issued since President Donald Trump ordered data to be made publicly available on which jurisdictions don’t fully cooperate with immigration officers — apparently a way to pressure local authorities into falling in line with Trump’s vigorous efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.

In a way, San Diego’s debut on the report, released Wednesday, shouldn’t come as a surprise. Most major counties in California are on the list. That’s because all jailers in the state are subject to the Trust Act, a 2013 law that bars policing agencies from accepting “detainer” requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in most cases. Detainers ask jailers to hold onto a non-citizen for up to 48 hours beyond the time an inmate would otherwise be released to give ICE officers time to take custody of the person for immigration proceedings.

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the county’s jails, says it is merely following state law, as well as a federal court order out of Oregon, by not honoring detainers.


Sheriffs around the state have voiced frustration at being called out by Attorney General Jeff Sessions for following state law — especially when many sheriffs, including San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore, otherwise have close working relationships with ICE.

“What Trump and Sessions are doing is trying to essentially bully law enforcement agencies to cooperate with detainers, but law enforcement can’t legally cooperate with detainers because doing so would violate the Fourth Amendment,” said Jennie Pasquarella, director of immigrant rights and a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of California.

She added: “Not a single sheriff in California honors immigration detainers because of legal concerns.”

On Sunday, ICE is implementing a new detainer policy, but it remains uncertain if the tweaks to procedure will change how sheriffs in California or elsewhere handle the requests.


San Diego County appears in Section I of the Justice Department report under a list of the jurisdictions that received the highest volume of detainer requests during the week of Feb. 4. All 10 counties are described as having policies that don’t comply with detainers on a regular basis. San Diego placed right in the middle of the pack, receiving 44 ICE detainer requests that week.

Other California counties, including Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange, also made the list.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer interviews a newly admitted inmate at the downtown San Diego Central Jail to determine whether he is suspected of violating immigration law.

What Trump and Sessions are doing is trying to essentially bully law enforcement agencies to cooperate with detainers. Jennie Pasquarella with the ACLU


However, the report does not list how many of the detainer requests were rejected by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. That data may be reflected in future reports.

Interestingly, San Diego, unlike several other California locales, does not appear in the latter section of the report, which lists jurisdictions that have enacted policies that restrict cooperation with ICE. Is it an oversight by ICE, one that will change with the next report? Or does ICE view San Diego — even with the Trust Act in place — as being cooperative enough? It is uncertain.

San Diego, like many other counties, has found other ways to work with ICE and still keep immigrants suspected of committing crimes from being released into the community.

For several years, the Sheriff’s Department has given over office space inside its jails to ICE officers who have access to booking information so they can determine which inmates might be immigrants — here legally or illegally. When ICE identifies an inmate suspected of violating immigration laws, ICE can interview the inmate and request to be notified when the inmate will be released. That gives ICE the opportunity to take custody of the inmate in the jail.


“These are criminal aliens who have committed serious crimes,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.

Sheriff’s spokesman Ryan Keim said the jails notified ICE roughly 680 times of an inmate’s release date in 2016. Currently, ICE picks up about 95 percent of the inmates they ask about, Keim said.

“The Department’s current policy successfully balances public safety and compliance with state and federal law,” the statement said.

Pasquarella of the ACLU said the Justice Department report is misleading because while it lists agencies that decline ICE detainers, it does not elaborate on whether the inmates who were the subject of those detainers were actually released into the community or taken into ICE custody because of notification policies like San Diego’s.


“The data itself doesn’t capture what’s really happening,” she said.

A footnote in the report says when a detainer is declined, it generally means the inmate is released back into the community, although it acknowledges there are instances where ICE does take custody beforehand.

The report is still a work in progress. The jurisdictions that are included are chosen based on public information or statements the agencies have made about their detainer policies. It is a list that is expected to grow and be refined over time, said ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez in Washington, D.C. The list is also not meant to be a list of sanctuary cities. It relates only to detainers.

(The American people) know that when cities and states refuse to help enforce immigration laws, our nation is less safe. Attorney General Jeff Sessions


While there is no universally agreed upon definition of a sanctuary city, it generally refers to places with policies that don’t cooperate with immigration authorities or that protect unauthorized immigrants.

In many instances, jurisdictions that don’t honor immigration detainers are viewed as sanctuary cities. San Diego County officials have repeatedly insisted they do not consider their jurisdictions to be sanctuaries.

Sessions lashed out this past Monday at locales that have “adopted policies designed to frustrate the enforcement of our immigration laws.”

“The American people are justifiably angry,” Sessions said in public remarks. “They know that when cities and states refuse to help enforce immigration laws, our nation is less safe. Failure to deport aliens who are convicted for criminal offenses puts whole communities at risk — especially immigrant communities in the very sanctuary jurisdictions that seek to protect the perpetrators.”


Sessions threatened to withhold federal grant money to jurisdictions with sanctuary policies and even “claw back” funds that have already been handed out.

Courts have long held that immigration detainers are requests, meaning compliance is voluntary.

ICE’s new detainer policy that goes into effect this Sunday tries to placate local law enforcement by requiring ICE officers to file an administrative immigration warrant for either arrest or deportation along with their detainer request. The warrant would be signed by the ICE officer rather than a judge.

Some ICE field offices already use this method, but the new policy makes it a rule nationwide, said Rodriguez of ICE.


A footnote in the policy points out that a Chicago court’s recent ruling is the reason behind the change: “Although ICE maintains that this is not legally required, ICE is implementing this warrant measure as a nationwide policy in light of one district court’s ruling that detention pursuant to an ICE detainer constitutes a warrantless arrest.”

Pasquarella, the ACLU attorney, said an officer-signed administrative warrant is likely not going to be enough to get around the legal concerns of sheriffs here or elsewhere.

“It doesn’t address the constitutional problem. An ICE warrant is not the same as one signed by a judge,” she said.

Rodriguez said it’s a difference of opinion. “We’re still trying to work with sheriffs in whatever way we can,” the ICE spokeswoman said.


The policy also continues to direct ICE officers to establish probable cause that the inmate is a non-citizen. Probable cause would include a final order of removal against the inmate, documents of ongoing removal proceedings, database confirmation of being an immigrant or statements made by the inmate.

Evidence of an inmate’s foreign birth or the absence of records in government databases are not enough probable cause to issue a detainer, according to the policy.


kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis