Santa Barbara County supervisors question sheriff’s interactions with ICE during annual Truth Act forum
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Questions about the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office’s interactions with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took center stage Tuesday during the county’s annual Truth Act forum.
The meeting, required under California law, gives the public and county leaders an opportunity to review how local law enforcement cooperates with federal immigration authorities.
Public comment was emotional, with some residents and immigration advocates expressing concerns about recent ICE activity.
“As an immigration attorney, I can tell you this agency is out of control and acting violently in our community,” one speaker told the Board of Supervisors.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said his office continues to follow California’s sanctuary law, Senate Bill 54, which limits cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.
“Their arrests are their business. They're really not our business,” Brown said. “They are a bona fide law enforcement agency. Whether people like that or not, they are.”
According to the sheriff’s office, ICE made 221 inquiries involving county jail inmates in 2025. Of those requests, 193 did not qualify under state law. Twenty-eight cases met the criteria for notification, and 12 inmates were transferred to ICE custody after their release.
“The people who we turned over to ICE, those 12 people, were all convicted of serious offenses,” Brown said. “They were all repeat offenders that were in our jail facility.”
The discussion comes after a recent Santa Barbara News-Press report found ICE agents made 99 arrests at or near county jails last year, prompting questions from supervisors about what happens after inmates are released.
Supervisor Laura Capps asked what measures are in place to evaluate the impacts of those arrests.
“You run the jail, but I would just wonder what's in place then to evaluate the impacts,” Capps said. “I mean, this is happening almost every day.”
Capps said the county should explore additional transparency and examine potential safety and oversight concerns.
“There’s safety concerns, there’s fiscal concerns, there’s oversight concerns,” she said. “Do we have cameras in the parking lots? These are our inmates that are released. And so it really begs the question of what sort of evaluation process is happening.”
Brown acknowledged that ICE agents sometimes wait in jail lobbies or parking lots to make arrests after inmates are released, actions he said are outside the sheriff’s control.
He also criticized the News-Press report, calling it misleading.
“It was written as though we were hiding something from the public when we said we've released X number of people,” Brown said.
No action was taken Tuesday, but several supervisors signaled they want to continue discussing whether additional safeguards or changes to county policy are needed.
The annual Truth Act forum is intended to provide transparency about local cooperation with immigration authorities and allow the public to weigh in on those practices.
