SAN BERNARDINO >> Immigrant rights organizers marched to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department headquarters Friday urging the agency to build trust with residents instead of cooperating more with immigration officers.

“Our public safety is at stake with the collaboration of local law enforcement and immigration agencies,” said Javier Hernandez, executive director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice.

The protest was scheduled from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at 655 E. 3rd St., in San Bernardino. By 5:12 p.m., the marchers had arrived and blocked off part of 3rd Street.

Organizers are criticizing Sheriff John McMahon’s opposition to Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, also referred to as a ‘sanctuary state’ bill, that would prohibit the use of state and local public resources to aid federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents in deportation actions.

McMahon has used the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino to justify his stance against the California Values Act. In an interview posted on YouTube, McMahon said the Sheriff’s Department reached out to ICE to determine how Tashfeen Malik, the woman who carried out the mass shooting with her husband, was allowed in the country.

“That was critical to our ability to investigate that case,” he said.

“Preventing local law enforcement specifically in the state of California from working with ICE could put the safety of our public in serious jeopardy,” he added.

Immigrant rights advocates are also wary of McMahon’s meeting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions earlier this year. McMahon has been public about this meeting, which he said took place a day before Sessions’ confirmation. He said it was a gathering involving other California sheriffs where he expressed frustration over how police agencies are no longer allowed to hold people 48 hours after their release from jail to allow ICE to pick them up.

McMahon said immigrants wanted by ICE are “dangerous criminals.”

Immigrants and their allies say the Sheriff’s Department appears to have no concern for the public safety of the thousands of undocumented immigrants and others in San Bernardino County who could be wrongly detained as President Donald Trump ramps up deportation efforts.

Guadalupe Plascencia, 59, of San Bernardino, for example, said she was detained by immigration authorities for deportation despite being an American citizen. She was expected to be at the protest.

She said she was arrested in March on a bench warrant for failing to testify in a 2007 case in Ontario. She was then arrested by immigration agents when leaving jail the next day.

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Cpl. Ruben Perez said ICE sent the agency an immigration detainer requesting that the Sheriff’s Department detain Plascencia up to 48 hours past her release. The Sheriff’s Department, however, does not honor immigration detainers unless they are signed by federal judges, or there is a valid arrest warrant, Perez said.

Perez said the agency did let immigration officials know they were releasing her.

Plascencia was released after her daughter showed her passport. She filed a notice of claim with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

ICE said the agency would not knowingly detain a U.S. citizen.