Santa Barbara County Jail listed on ‘detainer’ report
The Department of Homeland Security released the first ever report on law enforcement agencies that are “potentially endangering Americans” by not cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers.
The 35-page Declined Detainer Outcome Report was released Monday. It is the first report of future weekly reports that will list jurisdictions that have declined to honor ICE detainers or requests for notification. The report brings up 206 declined “detainers” that were registered in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement databases during the week of January 28 to February. Detainers are requests by ICE to local law enforcement agencies to hold certain people ICE possesses probable cause to believe they are removable from the United States. ICE wants to take custody of those individuals when they are released from local custody.
“Our goal is to build cooperative, respectful relationships with our law enforcement partners. We will continue collaborating with them to help ensure that illegal aliens who may pose a threat to our communities are not released onto the streets to potentially harm individuals living within our communities,” said Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan.
Santa Barbara County Jail is on the list for declining to detain an inmate from Mexico who was held in custody for a “forgery conviction.”
Other counties in California listed in the report are Los Angeles, Alameda, Madera, Orange and Sacramento.
ICE claims the report is intended to provide the public with information regarding crimes committed by undocumented residents.
Back on January 31, 2017, our anchor, Scott Hennessee, sat down with Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown where they talked about the federal immigration crackdown and how it will affect local law enforcement.
Scott Hennessee: “Does that policy make Santa Barbara County a sanctuary county?”
Sheriff Bill Brown: “The way we operate is we fully cooperate with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in terms of people who have been arrested within the confines of California law, which has gotten a little bit complicated in this area with the TRUTH Act and the TRUST Act.”
(The Trust Act prohibits law enforcement from detaining an individual on the basis of an ICE hold after the person becomes eligible for release from custody, unless the person has been convicted of specified crimes. The TRUTH Act requires a local law enforcement agency, prior to an interview between ICE and an individual in custody regarding civil immigration violations, to provide a written consent form that would explain the purpose of the interview, that it is voluntary, and that the individual may decline to be interviewed.)
Sheriff Bill Brown: “However we do work with ICE, which is a Federal law enforcement agency, and cooperate with them to the extent that we let them know if they request when somebody is going to be released, a criminal alien who is no longer going to be in our custody. They also come into our jail and they also make determinations as to who is and who is not documented.”
Reporter Vicky Nguyen reached out to ICE to find out more details regarding the inmate, but was not allowed any additional information outside of what’s printed in the report.
Click here to view the report.
